LIBRARYOF CONGRESS. 

e«, $mu. 



Shelf 



-i..G&T r i 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



FEOM THINGS 

TO GOD 






BY 

DAVID H. GREER, D. D. 

Rector of St. Bartholomew's Church, New York 



NEW YORK 






THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 and :; Bible Hoi be 

L893 






The Library 
of Congress 

washington 



<& 



Copyright, 1893, 

by 

THOHAS WHITTAKER. 



PREFACE. 



The sermons in this volume were preached 
without notes. They were taken down in short- 
hand at the time of their delivery, and are 
printed as they were reported. Their style, there- 
fore, is that of spoken and not written dis- 
course, and does not so easily lend itself to 
print. Any attempt to change it, however, 
would have involved not only a difficult but an 
almost impossible task. Neither would it have 
been desirable. The chief effectiveness of a ser- 
mon is after all the personality of the speaker, 
and while it is difficult to import this into the 
printed page, it can be done more fully by 
preserving than by trying to change the original 
form of utterance. As sermons therefore and 
not essays these discourses are printed, and it 
only remains to be said that the purpose of the 

author in publishing them is precisely the same 

lii 



IV PREFACE. 

as that which lie had in preaching them : to try 
to make men see that even the commonest life 
has in it something divine, and to help them a 
little in the midst of their daily affairs to 
pass from "Things to God." 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

From Things to God, 1 

The Personal Dominion of Christ, . ... 1-4 

What is Truth— A Study in Method, . . . 2G 

The Ladder of Life, 39 

Faith and Machinery, .53 

The Coming of the Kingdom of God, .... G9 

The Christian and the Theatre, 82 

Hiding from God, 98 

Mastership, 112 

Walking with God To-day, 123 

The Moral Conflict; and its Sic; nificance, . . 137 

Building the Temple of God, 151 

Preferring Our Own Way to God's, .... 164 

TnE True Vision and the False Seer, . . . 176 

Kin, and its Deliverer, 190 

Conscience, 204 

Going on Journeys to Find Christ, .... 215 

The Man and the Priest, 226 

Visions 238 

Christ Greater than Our Thought of Him, . 252 

The Gospel of the Resurrection, . . 265 



FROM THINGS TO GOD. 



PROM THINGS TO GOD. 

Therefore let no man glory in men : for all things are yours ; 
Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, 
or things present, or things to come ; all are yours ; and ye are 
Christ's : and Christ is God's. — 1 Corinthians iii. 21-23. 

The Corinthian Church, to which these words 
were addressed, was split up, as you know, into 
parties and consumed with jealousies. St. Paul 
undertakes to correct this state of tilings, not by 
discussing and adjusting the relative claims and 
merits of the different parties and saying where- 
in each was right and wherein each was wrong, 
but by giving to the members of all of them such 
a conception of themselves, so large and so sub- 
lime, that in the light of its apprehension their 
little, narrow, partisan spirit, with its little can- 
kering jealousies, would fade and cease to be. 
"You do not belong lo parties," he says; k * to 
partisan schools and opinions, to partisan leaders 
and teachers, you do not belong to them; they 
belong to you, and all their thoughts and utter- 



2 FROM THINGS TO GOD. 

ances, all their gifts and powers, all their things 
are yours. Yes," he goes on to say, his mind 
having once started in that direction, "all other 
things are yours, of the world, of life, of death, 
things present, things to come— all are yours, and 
ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." From 
things, to man, to Christ, to God — that is St. 
Paul's conception of the ascending order of the 
universe and of man's position in it ; let us take 
his thought this morning, and try to read it 
after him. 

" All things are yours." When St. Paul said 
that to the men of his time it was a prophecy. 
To-day it is fast becoming a prophecy fulfilled, 
and Ave see now as then they did not see, or 
did not see as clearly as we see now, how true it 
is that the earth and all things in it are indeed 
the property of and do belong to man. They 
belong to him, as we are seeing now, in the first 
place by a right of ancestral relationship, by a 
kind of blood affinity, or kindred link and tie. 
For whether he be regarded as having come out 
of the earth by a process of special creation or a 
process of gradual growth, he is in either case 
the product of the earth, and all the varied 
faculties of all the living forms which the earth 
itself contains, are seen and reflected in him. 



FROM THINGS TO GOD. 3 

" Hints and previsions of which faculties 
Are strewn confusedly everywhere about 
The inferior natures, all lead up higher : 
All shape out dimly the superior race, 
And man appears at last, 
The consummation of this scheme of being ; 
The completion of this sphere of life 
Whose attributes had here and there been scattered 
O'er the visible world before. 
Dim fragments meant 
To be united in some wondrous whole, 
Imperfect qualities throughout creation. 
Suggesting some one creature yet to make. 
Some point where all these scattered rays should meet 

convergent 
In the faculties of man." 

And we are seeing to-day how true it is, as St. 
Paul himself so long ago declared, that man is 
indeed the heir of all the things and all the 
forms which all the earth contains ; that by the 
right of pedigree, by the right of ancestry, by 
the right of descent and lineage, they do belong 
to him, they do belong to us. 

And they belong to us, too, by possession as 
well as by inheritance ; or they are coming so 
to belong to us. 

" Canst thou perceive the breadth of the 
earth?" exclaimed the patriarch Job, :is though 
he were stating some hopeless and impos- 
sible task, and lo, we have almost spanned 
the skies. "Canst thou send out the light- 



4 FROM THINGS TO GOD. 

nings ? " he says again, " that they should go and 
be thy servants, and say to thee, Here we are." 
That is precisely what we have done. And we 
have bent the bow of Arctnrus, and the sweet 
influence of the Pleiades we have succeeded in 
binding down to our practical purposes in life, as 
on all the waters around the globe we sail. And 
the way of the wind we know, and the path of 
the cloud, and the secret springs of the seas, and 
the place where light dwelleth we do in a 
measure know, and nearly all the forces of 
nature we have gathered up into our strong right 
hand, and are using at our will. And as the 
heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time 
all things are ours to-day, of the world of life, 
of death. Yes, even of death — and the treas- 
ures of gold and silver which those who have pre- 
ceded us have fought and died to accumulate, 
and the wisdom and the knowledge and the 
experience and the apprehensions of truth which 
they have fought and died to obtain, and the 
battles for civil liberty, for personal freedom in 
thought, speech, action, which they have fought 
and died to win ; yes the things of death are 
ours as well as the things of life. They have 
made us rich and great and strong, and will 
hereafter make us more so, for not only are 



FROM THINGS TO GOD. 5 

things present ours, but the things to come will 
be ours, and will give their glory and abundance 
to us and minister to our wealth. 

Well, then, as much as that of the apostle's 
declaration when he says, "All things are 
yours," we are able to-day to read ; as far as that 
in the movement and course of his ascending 
thought we are able to follow him. 

But more than that he says, and higher than 
that he climbs ; can we go on and read the rest of 
the sentence after him \ Can w r e we go on and 
climb the rest of the way with him? "All 
things are yours, and ye" — oh, wonderful thought 
and helpful; great, uplifting, inspiring — "and 
ye with all your things, with all your things, 
are Christ's." From them, to us, to Him, — from 
things, to man, to Christ. 

We are talking about property right to-day ; 
that is the length of the tenure line and that 
is where, in Jesus Christ, all property right 
is lodged. We own and we are owned. Look- 
ing down we are masters; looking up we are 
servants, and as all things belong to us, so do 
we with all our things belong to Jesus Christ. 
Now, observe, lie does not say that we oughl to 
belong to Christ or that we ought to be Christ's. 
cc You are Christ's," he says. Whether wo 



6 FROM THINGS TO GOD. 

know it or not, whether we confess it or not, 
our acknowledgment of it does not make it any 
more true ; our failure to acknowledge it does 
not make it any less true. No matter what 
we do, no matter where we are, in the Church 
or out of it, baptized or unbaptized, confirmed or 
unconfirmed, the fact remains : we are Christ's, 
and we cannot change that fact. We may 
refuse to recognize it ; Ave may try to live as 
though it were not so, and we may succeed in 
living as though it were not so ; but what we 
think or do or fail to do about a thing does not 
make the thing different from what the thing is, 
and according to St. Paul the thing here is this : 
we are Christ's — his property, he owns us, we 
are his. 

What do we call it when we take away a 
man's property, when we hold it back in our 
keeping and won't let him have it \ We have a 
word for it, we call it robbery. And that, 
just that, I think, St. Paul teaches and the 
whole Bible teaches, is what a person does 
when he refuses to let Jesus Christ take posses- 
sion of him. He is robbing Jesus Christ, he is 
taking away his property from him or holding 
it back and depriving him of his own. It is 
just because, it seems to me, this is not more 



F«OM THINGS TO GOD. 7 

clearly and generally understood and recognized, 
that there is a hesitancy on the part of so 
many people to make a public confession, 
acknowledgment, of Jesus Christ, to come into 
and join, as it is called, and unite with the Chris- 
tian Church. They seem to think that in doing 
so, by that step, by that act, by that public con- 
fession, they are becoming Jesus Christ's, and 
thus and then and there making themselves 
belong to and the property of Jesus Christ. And 
they shrink a little from the responsibility of 
that belonging to Jesus Christ and what it 
imposes and involves, and lest thereafter they 
should not be able to live consistently with it 
and so invite some censure and bring reproach 
upon him. But they are Christ's now, his 
property now, they belong to him now. Is it 
not a censurable, reproachful, and inconsistent 
thing to refuse to say that they are ? It is some- 
thing even to make an acknowledgment of a just 
debt ; it is usually the first step toward the pay- 
ment of it, and certainly it is not worse but 
better to try to pay and fail, than not to try to 
pay it or even to make an acknowledgment of it. 
Think about that, some of you. 

But let us go on and consider what this belong- 
ing to Jesus Chrisl really is, wlial H means to US. 



8 FROM THINGS TO GOB. 

and what it is that it does for us when we once 
come to realize and to be conscious of it. 

Climbing up through the scale of being only to 
ourselves, and going no higher than that, and 
looking no higher than that, we do not really 
know ourselves nor see the meaning of things. 
Like some little child at school who does not 
and cannot understand, or understands but dimly 
the deep, far-reaching reason and necessity of 
his tasks, and would like if he could to escape 
them ; we cannot appreciate, we cannot perceive 
and grasp the deep, far-reaching reason or 
disciplinary necessity that lies concealed in our 
tasks. Or like some soldier in battle, who in 
the thick of the smoke of the conflict is not able 
to recognize clearly and to discriminate between 
the different forms which he sees advancing to- 
ward him, and thinks that his friends are ene- 
mies, and his enemies friends ; looking at things 
as we are wrestling with them, we will surely 
make the same mistake, and think that those 
which are really happening to us for our good are 
happening for our hurt, or that those which are 
happening for our hurt are happening for our 
good. 

Yes, simply looking at things from the point 
of view of ourselves, how can we understand 



FROM THINGS TO GOD. 9 

them ; how can we put a right and true appraise- 
ment on them % How could the little seed or 
the life that is latent in it understand the things 
that happen to it — the decayings, the perishings, 
the destructions, the crumblings away, in its 
deep, dark, prison house, unless it could look 
on and see that larger, greater, more abundant 
life ; that life of the beautiful flower, that life 
of the golden grain, that life of the ripened fruit 
to which it belongs, and which all its happenings 
are for ? 

How could the life of the world in winter see 
and understand the things that are happening 
to-day — the cold, the frost, the ice-morsels, and 
the shrouds of snow around it — unless it could 
look on beyond its immediate self to the rich and 
radiant life of the summer's bloom and splendor, 
with which it is connected, to which it is moving 
on, in which it is fulfilled, and which, through 
all these wintry things and all these dark and 
cloudy things, it is getting ready to come. 

All, how can you and I understand the things 
that are happening now to us— the dark, the cold, 
the wintry things, as well as the bright, the joy- 
ous, and the summer things— unless we can send 
our vision up to some great height beyond us, to 
some great life above us, toward which they are 



10 FROM THINGS TO GOD. 

all determining, toward which they trend and 
go, and see in that the object which all these 
things are for. From things, to man, to Christ. 
From them, to us, to Him ! and looking at them 
from there, we begin to know them a little and 
only then do we know them. Seeing in him the 
life to which they are committed, to which they 
all belong, w T e put new values on them and see 
new meanings in them. Those sorrows and joys, 
those tasks and treasures, which come from 
the world and are given to us by life, and those 
experiences that come from bereavement and 
which have been taught us by death, they are 
ours, yes — but that is not all — and we are Christ's. 
Seeing that and knowing that, we then know how 
to regard them ; we then know what they are 
meant to do— not to make ua a little bit richer or 
more prosperous than our fellows, and stopping 
and ending there, not to make us poor, or poorer, 
not to make us comfortable or uncomfortable, 
not to make us light of heart, not to make us 
sad. Their aim is far beyond all that, and like 
St. Paul they seem to say, and looking at them 
from the point of view of the life of Christ, we 
seem to hear them say, " Whether Ave are bright 
or dark to you now, whether things of life or 
things of death, forgetting what has been already 



FROM THINGS TO GOD. 11 

accomplished in you, this one thing we do and 
we were meant to do, to press you on, to drive 
you on, to bring you nearer to Jesus Christ, to 
lift you up more and more through sunshine 
and cloud, through poverty and wealth, through 
all things — to lift you up to the high and emi- 
nent place to which you really belong." 

Then we begin to understand them a little, 
we begin to see some light. Then we begin 
to understand ourselves a little — those deep 
and fervent longings which in our hearts at 
times we do so strongly feel ; those dumb yearn- 
ings, prayings, passionate aspirations, earnest 
searchings after something, we know not what 
exactly — we understand them a little. We see 
the meaning of them, those tremblings and quiver- 
ings of the soul, as though it were on the margin 
of some deep and mystic joy, as though the 
breath of some infinite life had touched it : 
feelings, aspirations which we cannot voice, and 
which we call on music and song, and heaven 
and earth, and beauty and religion, and united 
prayer and worship and praise, to help us 
to express. It seems to me that what it all 
means is this, that there is something higher in 
the scale of being than that point to which as 
yet we have been able to come, that to something 



12 FROM THINGS TO GOD. 

greater, better, more, we do in fact belong; "ye 
are Christ' s " it means, and Christ's mighty spirit 
is stirring in our hearts. It is his life we feel, his 
voice we hear, seeming to say, as he is so are we, 
or so at least we will be. And the little buried 
seed will ripen into the rich golden grain, and 
the wintry earth will burst and break and laugh 
at last in the summer's beauty and bloom ; and 
the hopes and the aspirations which the winter's 
frost and snow cannot kill in us but only seem 
to intensify, will be fulfilled in Christ. 

That is the message, men and women, it seems 
to me which the Christian gospel brings to us. 
It shows us what that is to which we really be- 
long ; it says to us, " You do not belong to a 
life that is poor and weak, and worldly and 
selfish ; you do not belong to sin and pride and 
jealousy and strife ; oh, see the great and 
wonderful life which the gospel story proclaims; 
the life that has conquered sin, the life that 
many of us believe has conquered death ; the life 
that has moved so luminously across earth's 
darkened sky, that has given such cheer and 
courage to darkened hearts and homes — that is 
the life to which you really belong. 

" Ye are Christ's," ye are Christ's, is its ringing 
cry ; and — Christ is God's. For nowhere in the 



FROM THINGS TO GOD. 13 

universe, on its loftiest eminence, on its highest 
ground, is there anything more divine than that 
life of Christ. Trying to live that life, and day 
after day to make it ours, not in name merely 
but in fact, we more and more realize that 
we are moving on and on, we know not where 
exactly, but toward what is most divine in the 
universe. We are not going down to loss and 
waste, but going up to permanency and gain ; 
not going down to defeat, but going up to 
victory; not going down to death, but going 
up to life : and more and more we feel that 
the trend of all creation is toward the very 
highest, is toward the very best — from things to 
man, to Christ, to God ; who 

"Dwells in all 
From life's minute beginnings, up at last 
To man . . . 

And, man produced, all has its end thus far 
But in completed man begins anew 
A tendency to God." 



THE PERSONAL DOMINION OF CHRIST. 

Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever. — 
Hebrews xiii. 8. 

Eighteen hundred years ago St. Paul wrote 
to the Corinthian Christians "the fashion of this 
world passeth away," and all human history is 
an illustration of and a commentary upon the 
truth of his words. Change and decay are the 
order of human life, and things which are appar- 
ently immovable are not able to stand " 'gainst 
the tooth of time and razure of oblivion." 
There are certain periods, however, in the his- 
tory of mankind, when the changes in society 
are exceptionally rapid and radical. Such a 
period was the fourth century of the Christian 
era, was the century of the Schoolmen, was the 
century of the Crusaders, was the century of the 
Reformation, and such a period seems to be this 
nineteenth century also, which has witnessed 
both more numerous and rapid if not more radi- 
cal changes, in certain directions at least, than 
any other period of equal duration in the whole 
previous history of mankind, 

14 



THE PERSONAL DOMINION OF CHRIST. 1£ 

Naturally, therefore, , at such a time as this, 
when so many and great changes are taking 
place in society, in the Church and in the State, 
when no change seems to surprise us any more, 
and we are only surprised if after the lapse of a 
little while no great change occurs— naturally, 
I say, at such a time as this we are disposed to 
inquire what is there that will not change; to 
which we can, in the midst of things that are 
passing away, with a feeling of security cling, 
and upon which we may with a proper con- 
fidence rest. It is in response to this line of 
inquiry that I will ask you this morning to con- 
sider,' first, the fact itself, and then the signifi- 
cance of it, that, despite all the changes that 
have taken place in the past, that are taking- 
place in the present, or that will take place in 
the future, Jesus Christ has been, is, and in my 
judgment always will be, yesterday, to-day, and 
forever, the one abiding factor in the ever chang- 
ing economy of our human life. I do not mean 
to say, of course, that the speculative beliefs of 
man concerning Jesus Christ have been subject 
to no variation, or that there have been no changes 
in what is commonly called the world of reli- 
gious opinion, for in the face of facts that are 
patent to every intelligent observer, how could 1 



16 THE PERSONAL DOMINION OF CHRIST. 

or anyone truthfully say that? Bufi what I 
mean is this : 

The personal dominion of Christ over the 
hearts and consciences, over the lives of men, by 
all the changes that have taken place, has not 
been in the slightest measure disturbed, but has, 
on the contrary, strengthened and increased, and 
has widened more and more "with the process 
of the suns." This, I maintain, is a histori- 
cal fact. We do not need to prove it ; it is 
before our eyes ; we can see it ; in our immediate 
audience, we can hear its voice ; and with our 
hands we can touch and handle and come into 
contact with it. 

The first disciples of Jesus had to walk by 
faith in him. His claim to a perpetual dominion 
they had to take on trust, for he had not yet been 
lifted up in the sight of the world. His attract- 
ive power had not been widely felt ; it had not 
yet been proved. But to-day, it is not so neces- 
sary to walk by faith in Christ. And with the 
manifestations of his power throughout all civili- 
zation and around us on every hand, pervading 
our best political institutions, permeating our 
best social economy, leavening our literature, 
glorifying our art, inspiring our philanthropies, 
influencing more or less the wdiole broad move-. 



THE PERSONAL DOMINION OF CHRIST. 17 

ment of our modern conduct, and emanating 
from a character which, even after the lapse of 
nearly nineteen centuries, is still regarded as 
the ideal life of the world, to-day we can walk 
by sight ; and the personal dominion of Jesus 
Christ, unexhausted by time, unweakened by 
social changes, unimpaired by political revo- 
lutions or ecclesiastical perversions, is before our 
eyes as an unimpeachable fact. 

But then, it may be said, this after all is not 
an exceptional fact, for there are other religions 
in the world besides the Christian religion, older, 
some of them, and having more disciples. And 
that is true, but the influence exerted by those 
other religions is not the personal influence of 
their founders. They would, in fact, survive 
without their founders. 

Take away Mahomet, and Islam still remains; 
take away Buddha, and the " light of Asia," 
such as it is, still shines ; take away Zoroaster, 
and the Are still burns with unabated brightness 
on the Persian altar and hilltop ; take away Con- 
fucius, and the primitive religion of the Celestial 
Empire is in no way impaired; but take away 
Jesus Christ, and Christianity is gone. His name 
is stamped on every page of the Now Testament 
writings and on every chapter of ecclesiastical 



18 THE PERSONAL DOMINION OF CHRIST. 

history ; it is found in every creed, in every 
liturgy, in every form of worship ; for Christi- 
anity, in its essential and distinctive character, 
is simply Jesus Christ and the influence which he 
exerts. And so, from the very outset, wherever 
the great tidal wave of the Christian religion 
swept in its propagandist path among the peoples 
of the earth, from the shores of Palestine, across 
the waters of the Mediterranean, through the 
mountains of Asia Minor, along the banks of the 
Danube and the Tiber, to the far-off coasts of 
the British Isles, it is the form of the personal 
Christ that is always seen on the topmost crest 
of the wave, commanding attention, provoking 
thought, eliciting homage and love. While, 
therefore, there are other religions in the world, 
of venerable age and with numerous disciples, it 
is none the less true, as Mr. Lecky remarks, 
that "it was reserved for the Christian religion 
to present to the world an ideal character, which 
through all the changes of eighteen hundred 
years has filled the hearts of men with an im- 
passioned love, which has shown itself to be 
capable of acting on all ages, nations, tempera- 
ments, and conditions, and which has exerted so 
deep an influence that it may be truly said that 
the simple record of three short years of active 



THE PERSONAL DOMINION OF CHRIST. 19 

life has done more to regenerate and soften man- 
kind than all the disquisitions of philosophers 
and than all the exhortations of moralists." 

Let us now go a step farther, and consider the 
significance of this fact. Seeing what Jesus 
Christ has been and done in history we can also 
see what he is. For if it be true, and I am not 
aware that it is disputed, that the power of Jesus 
Christ has shown itself to be different from and 
greater than that of all great men combined, it 
must be other than human ; it must be divine. 
If time, the great destroyer that weakens the in- 
fluence of everyone else, has not in the least im- 
paired it, it must have proceeded from an eternal 
source. Without any finite limitation to it, as 
far as we can perceive, in its range of action, it 
must have proceeded from an infinite source 4 . 
Overcoming all obstacles, and obstacles, too, 
which others have found insurmountable, ii 
must have proceeded from something like an 
omnipotent source. Without a sufficient and 
adequate cause or explanation in human nature, 
as we know human nature, it must have pro- 
ceeded from an absolute source. Free from 
every evil taint and making exclusively (<>i 
righteousness, it must have proceeded from a 
perfect source. Perfect, absolute, omnipotent, 



20 THE PERSONAL DOMIXIOX OF CHEIST. 

infinite, and eternal ; these the positive philoso- 
pher tells are unthinkable terms, conveying no 
definite meaning to us and which we have no 
right to employ. And so perhaps in the abstract, 
and up in the air, thej^ are unthinkable terms. 
Bat looking at the power of Jesus Christ on 
the earth, at what he has been and done and is 
doing in human affairs, and comparing that 
power with all others that have energized in his- 
tory, we can truly say, using in part the lan- 
guage of an English theologian, that while in 
themselves, indeed, these are unthinkable terms, 
yet so far as we can enter at all into the compre- 
hension of them, we see them in Jesus Christ. 
And for us at least, and as far as we are con- 
cerned, " the Absolute was born at Bethlehem, 
the Perfect died on Calvary, the Omnipotent 
rose at Easter, the Infinite ascended from 
Bethany, and the Eternal came down at Pen- 
tecost." 

Thus do we reach the conviction, not by the 
subtle processes of metaphysical analysis, nor by 
the delicate balancings of textual and critical 
study, for which the great majority of us are 
not qualified, but by observation — by looking at 
facts ; by the positive method of historical re- 
view and comparison, that among all the sons of 



THE PERSONAL DOMINION" OF CHRIST. 21 

men there is none like unto the Son of Man. 
And the conviction, the reasonable conviction, is 
forced upon us that Jesus Christ, wielding a 
sceptre invincible and divine, is on the throne 
in this world, King of kings, Lord of lords, God 
manifest in flesh. Here, then, is the fact, and 
here is the significance of it : The Kingdom of 
Jesus Christ is a perpetual kingdom, it does not 
pass away, and the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is 
the Kingdom of God. 

Let me now direct your attention to some 
lessons which the fact teaches, and first this: 
In the fact of the perpetuity of the Kingdom of 
Jesus Christ in this world Ave And the true unity 
of the past and the principle of continuity 
in history. When the French savant, by one 
of those lucky guesses, as Ave are Avont to call 
them, but Avhich are rather the inspirations of 
genius, hit upon the character in the Rosetta 
stone Avhich answered to the royal name, lie was 
enabled, you remember, by that cleAv to trace 
out the Avhole hieroglyphic puzzle. In like 
manner, when amid the strifes and antagonisms 
and conflicting interests of the past, we once suc- 
ceed in finding the royal name of Christ, the 
veil is taken away, the confusion is confusion no 



22 THE PERSONAL DOMINION OF CHRIST. 

longer; ll resolves itself into order. We see 
that all the changes which have taken place, 
that all the dire calamities which have been 
experienced or victories which have been won, 
that all the defeats and losses and overthrows 
which have been encountered, have had the 
effect ultimately to bring- out more fully in the 
hearts o( men and in the soeial economy of the 
world the power of Jesus Chris!, to make it 
more widely, more profoundly felt, to establish 
more securely his influence and kingdom on the 
earth, and that all things have been moving to 
this end. And this applies not only to Christian 
history, but to history prior to the Christian era. 
Here is the explanation of the wonderful story 
of the Jewish nation, of the Greek, the Roman, 
the Egyptian nation, of all the nations of antiq- 
uity, which by their national struggles and 
developments were preparing the way for the 
coming of that Kingdom of the Son of Man 
which came in Jesus Christ, and which, through 
all the overtnrnings that mark the course of the 
past from the earliest time to the latest, lias been 
more and more conspicuously appearing in the 
world. 

In the perpetuity of the Kingdom of Jesus 
Christ we find the true unity of the past; we 



THE L DOM1 I- CHKJ 

also find in it the true hope for the fui 
The age in which we are living has wil 
many changes, material and mental, and the 
coming ill doubtless witness many more; 

but the result will be to enlarge and deepen the 
dominion of Jesus Chris The world will 
become not worse than it is. but better 
in the way, perhaps, of direct and continuous 
advance, but through ups and downs, like the 
course of one climbing a precipitous 

of mountain'-, occasionally going down into little 
ambling, falling, losing his way. and 
making tur and then which tempo- 

rarily reverse his path, and yet all the while 

dily and slowly pressing on toward the 
taut mountain-top, which by and by he i 

dually will Jesus Christ gather all human life 
about him. All forms of human pursuit will 
acknowledge him, all departments of human 
knowledge will pay their tribute to him. all the 
aspirations of the human heart, in art. in lei 
in m in philosophy, in . in comme 

will reach their consumi in him, and even 

the vo\ ying in the wilderness, uncertain 

where to find him. and winch ran only 
form the immediate duty and be content with 
the wages which i " w ill • n ;u 



24 THE PERSONAL DOMINION OF CHRIST. 

last with peace and joy, " Behold the Lamb of 
God," and " Crown him Lord of all." 

Finally, in the perpetuity of the Kingdom of 
Jesus Christ we find not only the true unity of 
the past and the true hope of the future, but 
also what is the true duty of the present hour. 
And comprehensively stated, what is that but 
to make all human society, at home, abroad, 
everywhere ; to make all human society in all 
the depth and breadth and intricacy of its com- 
plex relationship, feel and respond to the 
supremacy of Jesus Christ ? It is indeed a large 
and formidable task, requiring prudence and 
wisdom and good judgment and common sense, 
as well as enthusiasm and zeal. It is a task 
requiring all kinds of gifts — scholarship, wealth, 
knowledge of affairs, administrative ability, 
power to influence others — and w r ell might we be 
appalled at the proportions of it, if we did not 
remember these two things : First, that the Chris- 
tina Church already possesses these gifts. In 
her membership are to be found to-day the great 
majority of the ablest, wisest, strongest men and 
noblest women of Christendom, who have proved 
themselves to be such, and who can accomplish 
almost any task to which they earnestly apply 
themselves ; and second, that in fighting for 



THE PERSONAL DOMINION OF CHRIST. 25 

him who claimed tlie homage of all men, and 
who for eighteen hundred years has been mak- 
ing good the claim, Ave are fighting, not on the 
losing, but on the winning side ! And therefore 
we go into the battle with the inspiration that is 
born of that conviction. With this inspiration, 
and these qualifications, let us have the con- 
sciousness that we are co-workers with God in 
the fulfillment of that purpose which runs 
throughout all human history, Avhich has been 
unfolding itself throughout all the ages, and 
which will receive its consummation when all 
nations, kindreds, tribes, and tongues shall be 
gathered around the throne of Christ and his 
dominion shall be established over all. 

Here, then, in the midst of things that are 
passing away, is the one abiding factor in hu- 
man life, to which we can with a feeling of secu- 
rity cling, and upon which we may with a per- 
fect confidence rest. For despite all the changes 
that have taken place in the past, that are tak- 
ing place in the present, or that will take place 
in the future, stands, and will forever stand, the 
Kingdom of Jesus Christ. 



WHAT IS TRUTH— A STUDY IN METHOD. 

Pilate saith unto him, What is truth f — St. John xviii. 38. 

That question of Pilate's has not ceased to be 
asked ; it is asked now more than it was then, 
with more persistency, by more people, concern- 
ing more things. The intellectual inquisitive- 
ness is greater to-day and the field of inquiry 
bigger — so much bigger indeed that it would be 
a presumptuous and hopeless task to undertake 
to traverse it. I need scarcely say that the pur- 
pose I have in view is not so wide and scattering 
as that, and without attempting to answer the 
Roman Governor's question, I simply want to 
indicate the path on which, in my judgment, a 
person must move in order to reach an answer. 
My aim is not to show what truth is, but the 
w T ay in which to find it, and the study to which 
I invite you this morning is a study in method. 

What is truth? First, I remark, truth exists. 
That may seem to some of us like a superfluous 
kind of statement, like saying the earth exists ; 
of course it does. And yet there are a good 
many people who apparently do not believe that 



WHAT IS TRUTH — A STUDY IN METHOD. 27 

truth exists, and who ask that question of 
Pilate's, not with the expectation of receiving 
an answer to it, but as he seems to have asked it 
— in the strong and deep conviction that it does 
not have any answer — a vain, empty, and useless 
question which it is hardly worth while to ask, 
or which, if it is asked, is simply asked to show 
how hopeless it is to ask it. 

There are a good many such people, I say. 
They may not be here in this church this morn- 
ing, or they may be, for they sometimes go to 
church, but they are here numerously enough in 
New York City. We often meet and talk with 
them, and from their conversation — sometimes 
from their silence — they make the impression 
upon us, not so much that they are hostile to 
religion, or even indifferent to it, but that after 
thinking and studying and inquiring more or less 
about it, they have finally reached the conclu- 
sion that the religious problem, interesting as it 
is, important as it is, is a problem that cannot be 
solved. This I say is the conclusion they seem 
to have reached, that apart from what they can 
learn by a mathematical process or by what is 
called a physical or scientific process, there is 
nothing that can be called truth, and that in the 
attempt to find it there is no success to be had 



28 WHAT IS TRUTH — A STUDY IN METHOD. 

Their state of mind is fairly well represented by 
the old Persian poet, who has recently been 
translated and brought to light because his 
words are so expressive of the state of mind of 
many people to-day : 

Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
Doctor and sage, and heard great argument 
About it and about, but e'ermore came out 
By the same door that in I went. 

With them the seed of wisdom did I sow, 

And with mine own hands wrought to make it grow ; 

And this was all the harvest that I reaped— 

I came like water and like wind I go. 

There was a door to which I found no key, 
There was a veil through which I could not see, 
Some little talk awhile of thee and me — 
And then no more of me and thee. 

Are we not sometimes tempted, my friends, to 
have just a little of that feeling ourselves ? When 
we think of all the voices, so numerous, so differ- 
ent, so conflicting, so bewildering, that are sound- 
ing around us to-day ; the different religious 
bodies, the different sects and parties, the differ- 
ent schools of thought and the different leaders 
in them, are we not inclined to have that feeling 
ourselves? And when we think of the Protes- 
tant nnd the Romanist, and the Anglican and 
the Dissenter, and the old conservative critic and 



WHAT IS TRUTH — A STUDY IN METHOD. 29 

the new progressive critic, and the different in- 
terpretations which they put upon the Bible, 
and the different things which they see in it, and 
the different doctrines which they find, each of 
them claiming so stoutly that he alone is right 
and all the others wrong — are we not sometimes 
tempted to feel as the Roman Governor did, 
and to say with him so hopelessly, so despair- 
ingly, "What is truth?" Is it not after all 
but the shadow of each man's self, his prejudice, 
his preference, his temperament — a vain, tran- 
sient, fugitive thing that has no permanence in it, 
and that what is regarded by one man or one set 
of men as true to-day is rejected and denied by 
the next? and truth, what is it? Is it indeed at 
all? 

Now, that was the state of mind of Pontius 
Pilate's age, to which in the judgment hall he 
simply gave expression, and that too, is the state 
of mind, to some extent at least, of the age in 
which we live, and into which, at times, we are so 
apt to be drawn. And yet, when we come to 
consider and examine it a little more closely, we 
find that it is not only an undesirable state 
of mind, but a, logically inconsistent and self- 
contradictory state of mind, and thai we 
cannot get away from the conviction of the 



30 WHAT IS TRUTH — A STUDY IN METHOD. 

reality and the existence of fixed and abso- 
lute truth. Suppose, for instance, a person 
declares there is no such thing as truth. Does 
he not at the same time and with the same 
breath declare that there is ? For that at least is 
true, or that he thinks is true, that there is no 
such thing as truth, and so in denying it he 
affirms it and contradicts himself. 

Suppose he says, again, there is no such thing 
as error. Then that is true that there is no such 
thing as error, and to deny it is an error, and 
therefore there is such a thing as error. * 

Suppose he says again, yes, there is such a 
thing as truth, but then it is unascertainable — 
we can never discover or find it out or know any- 
thing about it. Is not that also an inconsistent 
statement ? Suppose you tell me, for instance, 
that there is something there back of that chan- 
cel window, but that you do not and cannot 
know anything about it. Then how do you 
know it is there % Must you not know some- 
thing of what it is — not much, perhaps, but a 
little : that it makes a noise back there or casts 
a shadow — before you can say that it is % Is it 
not equally contradictory for a person to say 
there is such a thing as truth, but we do not and 

* See " Philosophy of Religion," by Professor Poyce. 



WHAT IS TRUTH — A STUDY IN METHOD. 31 

cannot know anything about it? Then how does 
he know that there is such a thing ? Must he not 
have some little knowledge of what it is — not much 
perhaps, but a little — in order to say that it is ? 

Now, this may seem to some of you like an in- 
genious and subtle and hair-splitting play upon 
words, and perhaps not very practical. But it is 
not a play upon words, and it serves to show with 
what invincible persistency of conviction Ave do 
believe and cannot help believing in the positive 
reality of truth, and that when by some sophis- 
tical process we try to get away from that con- 
viction, we only go round in a circle and come 
back to it again. We cannot get away from it. 
And my apology for engaging you with this little 
bit of metaphysics, if an apology be needed, is 
the hope to make it evident that the state of mind 
more or less prevalent in our time, which de- 
clares or seems to declare that what we call 
truth is after all but a matter of opinion, a 
notional, fugitive, transient thing that has no 
permanence in it, is not a reasonable state of 
mind, but logically inconsistent and self-contra- 
dictory; that we cannot get away from the con- 
viction, even when we seem to, dial somewhere 
in the universe there is to be found an absolute, 
fixed standard of truth. 



32 WHAT IS TRUTH — A STUDY IX METHOD. 

Well, how can we find it ? This part of the sub- 
ject is not so metaphysical ; how can we find it ? 
To what doctor or teacher or book or scholar 
or sect or party shall Ave go ? Our Roman 
Catholic friend has an answer ready for us and 
says, Listen to the voice of the Pope, for lie is 
infallible and speaks with an infallible voice. 
But how are Ave to find out that he is infallible ? 
Simply because he says so ? Surely not, and Ave 
shall need some other infallible voice to tell us 
that he is infallible. 

Our Presbyterian friend says, Listen to the 
voice of Calvin. But there seems to be some dif- 
ference of opinion among our Presbyterian 
friends, which may become serious, as to AA r hat 
the voice of Calvin is. 

Our Episcopal friend says, Listen to the voice 
of the Church. But what voice of the Church 2 
For it is not always perfectly clear to every per- 
son Avhat the voice of the Church is, or Avhere 
Ave find it expressed. 

Noav, all these voices and utterances are good 
enough in their Avay. Each of them perhaps 
teaches some little measure of truth and reA r eals 
some aspect of it. Yet from the very nature of 
the case it is only a partial aspect. No man, no 
body of men, no age, no school of thought, is 



WHAT IS TRUTH— A STUDY IX METHOD. 33 

able to reflect it fully, but can only see a frag- 
ment of what is right and true. Its observation 
is limited to its point of view, and when its point 
of view is changed its observation is changed. 
You remember Matthew Arnold's words : 
The outspread world to span 
A cord the gods first slung, 
And then the soul of man 
\ There like a mirror hung ; 
And bade the winds through space 

Impel the gusty toy. 
Hither and thither spins 

The wind-borne mirroring soul, 
A thousand glimpses wins 

But never sees the whole ; 
Looks once, drives elsewhere, 
And leaves its last employ. 

Now if we could only reach some point of view, 
or if someone could come and take us up to 
a lofty height where we could with our vision 
sweep the whole of the scene; where we could 
look at things, not through the medium of one 
particular time or one particular age, — as they 
are apt by it to be dwarfed or unduly enlarged and 
emphasized and seen out of right proportion and 
relation to other things, — but tli rough the me- 
dium of all the times, — the fourth, the sixteenth, 
the nineteenth, the twentieth century and away 
beyond, then T think we would be in a position 
to see them as they are. Or if we could look al 



34 WHAT IS TRUTH — A STUDY IN METHOD. 

them with the mind of one who, though born 
in a particular age, however remote, is yet felt 
to be the contemporary and companion of all 
the ages, and who seems to speak to and see and 
live among them all — then it seems to me we 
would have discovered the true method by which 
to search for truth, the point of view from which 
to look, the path on which to move in order to 
see and find it, and then more and more we 
would continue to find it. 

Now, is not that precisely the mind of Jesus 
Christ? Is not that the point of view and the 
method of Jesus Christ? It has been pointed 
out as a remarkable thing in Shakspere that 
although he lived at a period when there was so 
much of local interest transpiring in England, 
both in the Church and State, — the great 
throes and struggles of the Protestant Reforma- 
tion, great political intrigues and wars at home 
and abroad, — there is yet so little of it reflected 
in his writings. His characters are simply men 
and women ; not men and women with the dress 
and the fashion and the gait and the manner 
of that particular time, but men and women 
always. It is the great cardinal passions of the 
universal human nature — its hates, its loves, its 
rivalries, its jealousies— of which he treats and 



WHAT IS TRUTH — A STUDY IN METHOD. 35 

speaks ; hence lie speaks to all the ages, and men 
and women everywhere find in him a voice. 

Pre-eminently was this true of one far greater 
than Shakspere. Living among a people whose 
minds were much disturbed by great burning 
questions of the clay-— questions concerning the 
policy to be pursued abroad, or to be pursued at 
home ; questions concerning deliverance from the 
oppressive power of Caesar and the payment of 
taxes to him ; questions concerning the rites and 
ceremonies of the temple and the traditions of 
the elders ; questions concerning parties and 
their relative merits and claims, the Sadducees 
and the Pharisees and the Essenes — questions 
about which all Israel at the time was deeply 
and engrossingly concerned, and yet he does not 
speak of them ; he has little or nothing to say 
about them. He rises above them all, calling 
himself, not son of David or son of Abraham, 
but simply Son of Man. He seems to see and 
touch and feel the great universal human life, 
as it throbs in every people and beats in every 
age, and the voice with which he speaks is a 
voice for sons of men. He gathers his disciples 
about him and in the quietest, simplest way tells 
them what to expect when he has gone away, 
and what will happen to them. Be says thai 



36 WHAT IS TKUTH — A STUDY IN METHOD. 

though the earth itself should be dissolved and 
the heavens rolled up like a scroll, his word will 
still endure. He does not seem to be living and 
walking so much in Galilee and Judea, as on the 
great highway of the ages, and he looks forward 
to the time when they shall come, not a few 
peasants and fishermen and some Galilean 
women, but from the east, west, north, south, 
and sit at his feet and learn of him as in some 
great kingdom of God. 

When upon one occasion the Emperor Jus- 
tinian was about to surrender to the clamor- 
ous claims and the harsh and violent demands 
of the mob, his wife Theodora is represented 
to have said to him that it was better to 
meet and go down to death as the avowed 
ruler of all, than purchase life for a little while 
by yielding to the unworthy exactions of the 
unrighteous few, and empire, she tells him, 
" is the best winding-sheet." Empire, universal 
empire, throughout all the world, throughout all 
the ages, is the winding-sheet of Jesus Christ. 
Victorious in the wilderness, victorious in Geth- 
semane, before that worldly-minded Governor in 
the judgment hall, victorious on the Cross, be- 
cause his eye looked not upon the unworthy 
demands of the immediate occasion, but upon 



WHAT IS TRUTH — A STUDY IK METHOD. 37 

the everlasting years, upon all future times, and 
wrapped around him in the winding-sheet of 
empire does he die. 

Here, then, is the point of view from which 
to look for truth : the point of view of Jesus 
Christ, of him whose vision seemed to compre- 
hend in its vast far-reaching scope their questions 
then and ours— the things, the thoughts, the 
questions of men in all the ages ; in whom not 
the light of a particular time or a particular 
land, but the light of the world appears ; whose 
voice is not the voice of truth as seen in part, but 
as seen in its wholeness — the voice of truth itself. 

Here is the point of view — the point of view of 
Christ— at which we must try to put ourselves, 
in order to see what is right and true. And not 
with the mind of the fourth century, not with 
the mind of the sixteenth century, not with the 
mind of the nineteenth century, but with the 
universal mind of Christ that covers all the cen- 
turies, must we try to solve the questions, the 
vexed and vexing questions which are with such 
great urgency pressing upon us now. Then and 
then alone, men and women, will we more 
and more see and know how we ought to think 
to-day and what we ought to do. Then lei us 
take our great modern life, with all its great, 



38 WHAT IS TKUTH — A STUDY IX METHOD. 

fierce, burning questions and contentions, and 
let us go with it back to Jesus Christ, to look at 
it from his high, great, comjjrehensive point of 
view, to learn of him what is right and true. 

Yes, let us take our questions, our hard 
personal questions — questions concerning duty 
which we cannot solve for ourselves ; questions 
concerning the world, the loss, the pain, the suf- 
fering of the world ; questions concerning life ; 
questions concerning death ; questions concern- 
ing the life through which we are passing now 
and the other life beyond toward which we are 
moving on, let us take them all and study them 
in the light of the mind of Christ and in that 
light let us try to find an answer to them. 

Oh, great, wonderful, universal Christ, whose 
voice has spoken to the sons of men in all ages, 
whose light has illumined, whose spirit has 
guided, whose presence has blessed and sus- 
tained them in the midst of perplexities, doubts, 
fears, bewilderments, to whom else can w r e go ? 
We would rather run the risk of being mistaken 
with thee than right with anyone else. But 
thou wilt guide us right, wilt teach us how to 
act, to think, to live, to die — to die in hope — and 
wait show us more and more of the glory and the 
brightness of the truth as it is in thee. 



THE LADDER OF LIFE. 

And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. 
And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, be- 
cause the sun was set . . . and he dreamed. — Genesis xxviii. 10, 
11, 12. 

Here is a picture — quite a commonplace one — 
of a young man starting out in life. The scenes 
of the'past are closed ; the future lies before him, 
unattempted and uncertain, and the only thing 
that his father can do for him now is to say to 
him as he does, as every father would say, at 
such a time, " God Almighty bless thee, my son, 
and make thee good and prosperous." With 
this invocation as his only heritage, he enters 
upon his career, and goes forth into the world to 
measure himself with, and to find his place 
among, strangers. This is his situation when we 
overtake him in the text. He has journeyed, it 
seems, a whole day from the parental root', and 
now as the day is closing and the "glimmering 
landscape fades upon the sight,' 5 and the twi- 
light gathers and the darkness deepens, he lies 
down to rest, this solitary traveler upon life's 
great pathway, with the earth for a bod and ili< i 

89 



40 THE LADDER OF LIFE. 

stones for a pillow and the skies above for a 
covering. 

And yet, rough and rugged as is his couch that 
night, his sleep is sweet and peaceful; and he 
dreams of a luminous ladder stretching from 
earth to heaven, of many angels of God ascend- 
ing and descending upon it, and of a comfort- 
ing voice of God speaking to him and saying, 
" Behold, I am with thee and will keep thee in 
all places, whithersoever thou goest." Now, in 
this dream of Jacob at Bethel, although the 
place is so remote and the time so long ago, we 
have, I think, a picture of Christian life, — indeed 
of all true human life, which, when true, is 
Christian, — standing on the earth, planted firmly 
there in the midst of human affairs, duties, inter- 
ests, pleasures, yet receiving inspiration, guid- 
ance, comfort, help from a life above the earth, 
and resting like a ladder on this world and the 
next. 

Let us look at this picture for a little while 
and see what it has to teach and suggest. The 
Christian life, like all life in this world, rests on 
a physical basis, for human nature consists of 
body as well as soul, and "what shall Ave eat?" is 
a question, not of so high an order, but just as 
urgent at times, as " what shall we do to be 



THE LADDER OF LIFE. 41 

saved?" It is, therefore, a question which a 
Christian man, like every man, must ask, and like 
every man must somehow manage to answer, for 
no matter how devout and pious and spiritually 
minded and intellectual a person may be, he 
cannot subsist on a diet of pure thought and 
emotion. The keenest logic, the most delicate 
sentiment, the most brilliant reasoning, wait 
upon appetite. The poet, the artist, the states- 
man, the man of affairs, the philosopher, the 
philanthropist, the reformer, are conditioned in 
their loftiest flights of imagination, in their 
noblest self-sacrifices for a suffering humanity, 
by the inexorable mandate of a recurring physical 
hunger. Christian life, therefore, must stand on 
a physical basis, it must rest on the earth. 
Christian people must engage in the great world 
struggle for bread, for physical food and sub- 
sistence, participating in worldly affairs, and 
thus doing their part to develop the physical 
wealth of the world, bringing more and more its 
hidden treasure out and making this world in a 
physical sense a more comfortable place to live 
in. 

There is, I know, a danger to the Christian 
life in this, of which Twill presently speak, and 
yet, great as the danger is in living in the world. 



42 THE LADDER OF LIFE. 

there is a greater danger in trying to live outside 
of it. It is only by coming into touch and con- 
tact with the real, active, busy, manifold life of 
the world that the Christian life can maintain its 
purity of heart. That may seem like a strange 
statement to some of you ; nevertheless it is true, 
and experience has proved it true. Christian 
men and women have at times tried the experi- 
ment of living outside of the world, but their ef- 
forts have not been successful. They have been, 
on the contrary, very disastrous and bad, and by 
their well-intentioned but most unwise endeavor 
to climb up into the heavens by a ladder which, 
like Mahomet's coffin, was suspended in the air, 
one end of which did not rest and stand upon the 
ground, they have ultimately fallen, ladder and 
all, into the mud and mire of the ditch. And 
the scandalous story of the monastic orders — 
the monasteries, the convents, the abbeys, and 
the other religious houses in England at the 
time of the Reformation, where the plainest 
principles of purity and morality were wantonly 
disregarded and violated, and even the common 
decencies of conduct had ceased to be observed, 
and which perhaps more than anything else gave 
rise to the Reformation — should be sufficient, I 
think, to teach this lesson to us. And no matter 



THE LADDER OE LIEE. 413 

how great the apparent gain may be or praise- 
worthy the motive, or good for a time the re- 
sult, the sure and final outcome of ignoring the 
physical basis of the Christian life, the natural 
human worldly basis, of trying to withdraw it 
from its true and proper environment in the com- 
mon life of the world, is not to make it more 
spiritual, but to make it more corrupt, not better 
indeed than the worldly life, but something 
very much worse. 

I remark again that it is only by coming into 
touch and contact with the great life of the 
world that the Christian life can preserve its 
sanity ; not only the excellencies of its moral 
character and the purity of its heart, but the ex- 
cellencies of its intellectual character and the 
purity of its head. And Avhen Christian people 
look upon the Christian life as a little path, not 
leading into and across the great face of the 
world, but leading outside of and apart from it, 
they are apt to become unbalanced in judgment, 
wanting in common sense, in practical wisdom 
and knowledge, and in their effort to save their 
souls they sometimes lose their minds; or, [f they 
do not lose them wholly, they lose them a little 
and in part. We have seen it in the past, we 
see it also to-day : men and women whose Chris- 



44 THE LADDER OF LIFE. 

tian life, although so earnest, so zealous, so sin- 
cere, yet seems to be up in the air, not standing 
on the ground nor resting on the common mother 
earth, beautiful perhaps as a theory, but flighty, 
queer, eccentric, full of extravaganzas and senti- 
mentalisms, and which when brought down to 
the common, practical, hard, every-day life of 
the world does not work. 

This leads me to say again that it is only by 
coming into touch and contact with the great 
and real and busy life of the world that the 
Christian life can exert to the utmost its in- 
fluence in the world. A story is told, I remem- 
ber, of an old philosopher, that he would become 
at times so absorbed in deep meditations con- 
cerning the mysterious nature of God and the 
human soul that he would stand almost motion- 
less for a period of twelve hours or more in the 
hot and open sun, with bare, blistered, swollen, 
bleeding feet, so full of beautiful thoughts con- 
cerning immortality and the life to come that he 
forgot to put his shoes on. 

My friends, if this Christian life of ours is to 
be a real power and influence in the world, if, as 
Jesus Christ meant, it is to touch and shape and 
control the world, if it is to be something more 
than a beautiful bit of idealism; then, instead of 



THE LADDER OF LIFE. 45 

standing by itself motionless and fixed in some 
sweet and beautiful place apart from the world, 
it must put on its shoes and go forth into the 
world, must come into contact with it, must 
learn how to move on all the great world 
thoroughfares of toil and traffic and pursuit, 
engagement, amusement, and pleasure. 

How is the great political life of the world to 
be Christianized and redeemed if Christian peo- 
ple do not take a part in politics? How is the 
municipal life of New York City to be brought 
more fully under Christian influence, — and I 
presume it will be admitted by all parties, by 
persons of all political complexions, that there 
is room for improvement, — if when election day 
comes so many Christian people, instead of go- 
ing to the polls, run off to Tuxedo or some 
other place in the country and go hunting and 
fishing ? 

How is the great amusement life of the world 
to be purified and redeemed from its debasing 
and corrupting tendencies if Christian people, 
the best of them, do not participate with discrim- 
inating engagement in it? How is the great 
business life of the world to be redeemed from its 
hard avarice, from its selfish greed, unless there 
are many Christian people there who show by 



46 THE LADDER OF LIFE. 

conduct and example that while they too love 
gold they love God more than gold ? 

How is any great department of the world's 
great life to be Christianized and redeemed except 
as we understand it and know it and come into 
contact with it, and in that way try to help it? 

Yes, for the maintenance of its purity, for the 
preservation of its sanity, for the exertion of its 
best and most effective influences, the Christian 
life must stand on a physical basis, must rest on 
the earth, on all the earth ; must come into rela- 
tion, must keep itself in touch with this real, 
great, busy life of the world. 

Bat now, without elaborating this any more, 
let me go on to speak of the other side of the 
subject. I have said that there is a danger to 
the Christian in trying to separate himself from 
the world. There is also a danger in living in 
the world. Jesus Christ in clear and vigorous 
language has pointed out that danger. "How 
hard it is," he says, "for one who trusts in 
riches to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is 
easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye 
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of 
heaven." Strong language, strong language ; let 
us not skip it when we read the gospel story. 
Let us try to find out what it means, for of this 



THE LADDER OF LIFE. 47 

we may be sure, that the sayings of Christ are 
true; not true because he says them, but that he 
says them because they are true. 

What then is the kingdom of heaven to which 
he here refers ? Not, as I understand it, a king- 
dom of heaven beyond the grave and in some 
other world, but a kingdom of heaven here, on 
the earth, which those who trust in riches are 
liable to miss and not enter. And why? Be- 
cause they are apt to trust too much in riches, to 
make them their heaven, their only heaven ; and 
to want no other heaven and by and by to think 
there is no other. In trying hard to minister to 
their physical needs, their physical wants and 
requirements, duties, pleasures, interests, and 
gratifications of appetite, they are apt to over- 
look and ignore their higher ends and greater, to 
forget indeed that they have any higher ends, 
and after a while to cease altogether— the soul 
lost, dead — to cease altogether to feel them. 
They look out on life, and all they see or care 
to see or try to see is money; and the stars in 
the firmament over their heads are simply stars 
of gold. "Oh, come and shine upon us," fcliey 
say, — the poor as well as the rich, for the man 
who is frying hard to be rich is virtually in the 
same case with the man who is rich,- "ye stars 



48 THE LADDER OF LIFE. 

of golden light; come shed your beams upon our 
hearts, come make us happy and glad, come 
more and more, ye golden stars, be our God, 
our religion, our heaven on earth." Now, when 
that is the heaven which men so engrossingly look 
for, they find it hard to see and enter any other. 

And yet, says Jesus Christ, there is another 
and a better heaven on earth. Ah, my friends, 
are we not beginning to-day to find it out a little, 
that this materialistic life, however comely and 
fair, which moves and finds its being and its 
gratifications in the physical senses, is breaking 
down under its own weight and is not giving 
to men the happiness that they had expected 
from it? Are we not beginning to find, I mean 
the people at large, that the physical treasures 
of life are not the only treasures nor the great- 
est ; that there are treasures in the mind, treas- 
ures in the heart, treasures in the soul, which if 
diligently sought may be abundantly had, and 
which if missed, leave us poor indeed ? 

There is a kingdom of mind culture. Long 
ago it was said by a wise man that a Tamer- 
lane standing at the gate of Damascus, pano- 
plied in armor and with glittering battle-ax 
upon his shoulder, is a less important factor in 
the history of the world than the little boy play- 



THE LADDER OF LIFE. 49 

ing at nine-pins in the streets of Metz, whose 
movable types were destined to move the world. 
Yes, and they have moved it and illuminated 
and glorified it. They have given new treasures 
to it, liberated new forces in it, and spread a new 
heaven of letters and learning over it. The 
kingdom of intellectual culture — how hard it is 
for a man whose thoughts are engrossingly fixed 
upon mere material treasures to enter that king- 
dom of heaven ! how much he will lack if he does 
not ! And he is beginning to-day to feel the lack. 

There is a kingdom of heart culture, pure, 
sweet, of great reward, to be found more partic- 
ularly in the sheltered and secluded life of 
the home. How hard it is for a busy man of 
affairs to-day to enter that kingdom ! how much 
he will lack if he does not ! And he is beginning 
to-day to feel that lack, and to say to himself as 
he sees how this mad and maddening search of 
the modern world for gold, this fierce and 
feverish rush, is making the sweet, quiet, old- 
fashioned home-life impossible any more, is break- 
ing it up, and turning it out-of-doors into the 
street, " I wonder after all if it pays." 

There is a heaven of soul culture, of spiritual 
grace and beauty, of spiritual strength and 
refinement and delicacy of spiritual perception, 



50 THE LADDETC OF LIFE. 

to which new vistas open, new hopes arise, new 
faiths appear, new glories are made to shine, 
brighter than the pride of life, sweeter than the 
lust of the flesh, and of a more enduring bril- 
liancy than all the material splendors revealed 
to the natural eye. There is a heaven in the soul 
here, the assurance of a heaven for the soul here- 
after; a heaven of trust and confidence in, and 
a heaven of peace with, God ; how hard it is for 
the man engrossed in material pursuits to enter 
that kingdom of heaven ! How much he will 
lack if he does not enter it ! And he is beginning 
to-day, it seems to me, to feel that lack a little, 
beginning to say to himself, " Whatever may be 
said against particular doctrines or theories or the 
utterances of the churches, they do stand for and 
point to something good and true, ' ' without which, 
despite everything else he has done, or acquired 
or may acquire, he will miss the thing he so much 
wants and has been trying so hard to find. 

Now let me sum what has been said. The true 
and proper attitude of Christian life, of all life, 
all human life, what is it ? Standing on the 
earth, dwelling on the earth, taking part in, 
moving about here and there in the great world- 
struggle for treasures, for pleasures ? Yes, it is 
that, and for the sake of ourselves, as well as for 



THE LADDER OF LIFE. 51 

the sake of the world, let us not try to get out of 
it, nor make the great mistake and repeat the 
historic blunder of supposing that, in order to be 
good Christians and to grow in the Christian life, 
we must somehow manage to extricate and with- 
draw ourselves from this common secular life. 
No ; it is in the midst of this common life of the 
world that the Christian life is to grow, the 
Christian character to flourish, and the Christian 
influences to be exerted. The ladder must rest 
on the earth. 

And yet there are many and great temptations 
and snares and dangers in this worldly life, nor 
can it give the thing we need to make ourselves 
complete. Treasures there are, and pleasures 
and hopes and inspirations and high transfig- 
uring faiths, not born of man, but of God ; a 
heaven of joy and peace which, in the race for 
riches, no matter how fast or successfully we 
run, we are not able to reach. The Christian 
life must stand upon the earth, in the midst of 
earthly affairs, interests, duties, ambitions, pleas- 
ures, and yet must somehow find a pathway clear 
and open to things above the earth, to joys that do 
not perish, to hopes that do not die, to faiths that 
do not fail, to riches that do not rust, to great 
and eternal realities lying beyond the world. 



52 THE LADDER OF LIFE. 

It is difficult, I know, to live in this way without 
serving God and Mammon both, which Christ 
says we cannot do ; it is difficult to live in this 
world and yet at the same time to enter and live 
in some other world. To escape the difficulty 
some have become "gainless lovers of God," 
others have become " godless lovers of gain." 
Neither course is right. We must stand on the 
earth, and yet must touch and enter a heaven 
above the earth. And to be enabled to do it suc- 
cessfully we must follow closely the guidance of 
One who has said of himself, "No man cometh 
down from heaven but the Son of Man which is 
in heaven," whose life did rest like a ladder on 
this world and the next, and along which the 
angels are seen ascending and descending as 
upon the Son of Man. 

That is the Christian life, standing on the 
earth, going here and there, from business to 
society, from the club room to the counting 
room and the drawing room, moving across the 
earth, sailing across the waters, going here 
and there, engaging in this and that, and yet 
ever hearing the comforting, guiding, inspiring 
voice of the great All-Father God, "I am with 
thee, and will keep thee in all places whitherso- 
ever thou goest." 



FAITH AND MACHINERY. 

And the Lord said unto Mm, What is that in thine hand ? And 
he said, A rod. — Exodus iv. 2. 

These words are associated with one of the 
most remarkable and noteworthy events in the 
history of mankind, namely, the deliverance of 
the children of Israel from their house of bond- 
age in Egypt. The Lord appeared unto Moses 
as he kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, 
in the mountain of Horeb, and said, " Come 
now, therefore, and I will send thee unto 
Pharaoh that thou mayest bring the children of 
Israel forth"; and Moses said unto God, u Who 
am I that I should go unto Pharaoh, or that I 
should bring the children of Israel forth?" 
"How shall I do it?" he seems to ask, "and 
what shall I do it with ? What weapons shall I 
employ? where shall I find the equipment suffi- 
cient for such an arduous task? I have no 
sword; no army. I am not a soldier; I am 
only a shepherd, and when I go and tell them 
that thou hast sent me, they will not believe me 
or hearken unto my voice." And the Lord said 

53 



54 FAITH AND MACHINERY. 



n 



unto Moses, " What is that in thine hand? 
and Moses said, "A rod." That was enough — 
the only weapon required, the staff with which 
he kept the sheep in the wilderness, the thing 
he had already in his possession, and all that 
was needed was to use it with faith in God. 

I have selected this incident as my text this 
morning for the purpose of trying to show you 
what kind of equipment God requires for doing 
his work in the world ; my subject is, " Faith in 
God in its relation to faith in machinery," using 
the word " machinery," as denoting all kinds 
of tools, mental, moral, and social, as well as 
mechanical. 

It is not uncommon to hear people say what 
good things they would like to do and indeed 
would do if only they had the means to do them 
with ; if, for instance, they were rich, or richer, 
had more social influence, occupied more promi- 
nent places among their fellow-men, or were in 
some way differently circumstanced and situated 
from what they actually are. This or that is 
good, they admit, is very good and important, 
a thing that ought to be done, a change that 
ought to made, a- great deliverance that ought 
to be wrought, or a great reformation that 
ought to be effected; but they themselves, they 



FAITH AKD MACHINERY. 55 

say, are not fitted for it ; they have not the 
means, the weapons, the tools, to work with, the 
wisdom, the learning, the strength — are not the 
persons to do it. 

Well, that may be true. Different persons 
have, of course, different qualifications, different 
opportunities, and different talents, and some 
persons can work at a given task much more 
effectively than others. And yet, while that is 
true, is it not also true — a truth which in the 
Bible is especially taught — that what men have 
or are, no matter how poor and weak and inade- 
quate it seems to be, can, when used with faith 
in God, accomplish more than they think ? Is 
not that the very thing, the principle, which the 
Bible is meant to illustrate ? which makes the 
Bible so different— or one of the things which 
make the Bible so different from all other 
books; which has made the religion of the Bible 
such a unique phenomenon in the history of 
mankind ? What you need, it has said to men, 
with a voice different from all other voices, to do 
great work for God in the world, — and this 
makes it a voice for all people,— is not some 
greater instrument than whal you have already, 
some greater gift of genius, some greater natural 
oik low men t or circumstantial equipment, do 



56 FAITH AND MACHINERY. 

not wait for that. What you have is enough, — the 
shepherd rod of a Moses, the trumpet horn of a 
Joshua, the scarlet thread of a Rahab, the ham- 
mer and nail of a Jael, the sling and stone of a 
David, the barley loaves and fishes of the lad in 
the gospel story, the one little talent which you 
possess of wisdom, skill, experience, sympathy, 
beauty, power. Do not despise and neglect it 
because it is poor and weak, or wrap it up and 
bury it and be afraid to exert it, but with faith 
in God, go use it, looking to and trusting in God 
to multiply and bless it. You cannot tell 
beforehand what he may do with it, what great 
results he can accomplish by it ; therefore take 
it and go; that shepherd's rod, that sling and 
stone, the one little talent which you possess, 
the thing you have in hand, with faith in God, 
go use it. 

This, I say, is the lesson which the Bible 
especially teaches, the principle which it illus- 
trates, the great truth for which the Bible 
especially stands, that what men need to do 
great work for God is not great machinery, is 
not great tools and instruments, is not great 
natural power, or circumstantial equipment — or 
not primarily that, but first of all and most of all 
faith in God; faith in what he has given, which 



FAITH AND MACHINERY. 57 

means faith in him who gave it. If it be great, 
so much the better, of course ; but if little, the 
rod and staff, the sling and stone — go use it, and 
God will make it effective and strong. See how 
it was in the days of the early Church. What 
was it that made it so powerful % What was the 
equipment of the men who were so active in it, 
and whose activity planted it, even before that 
age, that generation, had passed, all over the 
face of the civilized earth. They did not have 
much learning, as we count learning in our time, 
and certainly not much money, no great facili- 
ties for getting about, no printed books nor 
Bibles, — not as we have them now, — and no 
Bible Societies, no Missionary Boards and 
Women's Auxiliaries and charitable organiza- 
tions and Christian schools and colleges, no 
churches, no cathedrals, nothing much— but 
faith in God. The power to work miracles ? Yes, 
so it seems, to a very limited extent, and for a 
very limited time, and with a very limited result 
accomplished by it. But read the story as you 
find it in the New Testament books and the 
other literature of the time, and see if it be not 
true that the power which they exerted was, not 
chiefly the power of miracles, or the power of 
great machinery, weapons, tools, instruments, 



58 FAITH AND MACHINERY. 

but the power of a faith in God that vitalized 
the talent, equipment, which they had. And 
yet what a mighty work they wrought, what 
a great deliverance they effected ; how they 
changed the face of the earth, and turned it up- 
side down! 

Then look at the Church at the present time. 
With a scholarship never so ripe, with a mem- 
bership never so numerous, with a treasury 
never so full, with a social organization never 
so widely ramified, with a machinery never 
so ample, with ways and means and tools and 
instruments never so great and many; and yet, 
despite all these excellent tools and this great 
machinery, what little progress is made to-day 
by the Church in delivering the children of God 
from their houses of bondage all over the face of 
the earth ! Why ? Because, it seems to me, that 
w T e to-day have too much faith in machinery. 
We are making an idol of it, and putting our 
trust in it instead of God. Is there some great 
work to be done, or it may be some little work ? 
Some social need to be supplied or some dis- 
tress relieved ? Instead of casting ourselves on 
God and strengthening ourselves in him, or 
trying to find some man of God to do it, with 
that personal courage, force, daring, which faith 



FAITH AND MACHINERY. 59 

in God gives — Go to, we say ; let us get to- 
gether and form a new society, with constitution 
and by-laws and officers, and let us appoint 
committees and subcommittees ; let us make 
some new machinery with ropes and pulleys, 
and wheels within wheels, so admirably adjusted 
and fitted to one another that they will almost 
go automatically. And so we have more social 
mechanism, more social apparatus, and another 
society is added to the hundred thousand 
societies already in existence in Christendom, 
and w 7 e stand off and point with satisfaction to 
them, or rather we are buried beneath them, 
with personal life, liberty, force, almost crushed 
and broken, and we have just enough strength 
left to look up and say, " These be thy gods, 
Israel." 

Well, of course we must have our social 
machinery; Ave must have our benevolent and re- 
ligious societies and organizations, though some 
of them, I think, might well be spared and dis- 
pensed with ; and yet, however important and 
necessary they may be in doing the work of 
God, there is one thing more important, and 
that is a living faith in God. Thai is the equip- 
ment which first of all he requires, and which, 
when we have it, will make our presenl resources, 



60 FAITH AND MACHINERY. 

ways and means and instruments, sufficient for 
and equal to the performance of our tasks. 
And this, it seems to me, is the message of God 
to his people here and now, as to that man in 
Horeb who was to be the leader of his people 
then : " Go bring my children forth," all over 
the face of the earth ; wherever you hear their 
cry of distress and see their need for help, go 
bring my children forth from their houses of 
bondage to-day, lift them up to manhood, make 
them free, give them hope and liberty in Jesus 
Christ. You need no new machinery, no other 
than what you have. The tools, the instru- 
ments, the weapons, which you already possess 
— " What is that in thine hand?" go, take it, 
use it, and bring my children forth from their 
houses of bondage. 

Now, having treated the subject in this general 
way, let me make for a few moments a special 
application of it, and speak of one house of 
bondage in particular here in New York City, to 
wiiich I referred last Sunday, namely, the tene- 
ment house. That it is a house of bondage, 
moral and spiritual, I tried then to show you; 
and what a large space it occupies in our popu- 
lation and how many people are in it! Down 
in Crosby Street, for instance, there is a tene- 



FAITH AND MACHINERY. 61 

ment house which has 191 adults and 91 chil- 
dren living in it, and in the house immediately 
adjoining there were found by actual count 89 
children, making a total of 180 children in two 
contiguous houses. Now, how is it possible in 
the midst of such an environment — but I cannot 
go into that matter again, I tried to cover the 
ground last Sunday. I stated the problem a 
week ago, but did not try to solve it, nor am I 
going to attempt anything so ambitious now. 
The point I wish to make is simply this, that 
while the tenement house is here in our midst, 
and here to stay, I think, though not, I hope, to 
stay precisely as it is, the Christian people of 
New York can, with the resources which they 
already possess, if only they have enough faith 
in God to use them, do much to redeem the 
life in that house of bondage. How ? The 
lack of a practical helpfulness proceeds often- 
times, not from the lack of benevolence but 
from the lack of information, and there is 
many a man in New York City at present who 
goes on his way week after week, upon his 
beaten path, his business course, his round of 
social, professional duties and engagements, 
largely indifferent to the poor and doing but 
little to help them, not because his heart is hard 



62 FAITH AND MACHINERY. 

and lie cannot feel for the poor and would not 
be willing to help them, but simply because he 
does not see and know them, where and what 
they are, or how they live and exist. 

A few years since a little pamphlet, called 
"The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," was pub- 
lished, of which you have all heard and which 
some of you doubtless have read, in which the 
author portrayed from personal observation the 
sad conditions of life in a London tenement 
house. This, I remember, is one illustration 
he gives : 

Down in the cellar two families live. In a lit- 
tle room, near by, are a father and mother and 
six children, two of whom are ill with scarlet 
fever. In still another room is a woman in an 
advanced stage of consumption, with a drunken 
husband and five children, one of whom has just 
gone out to gather some sticks to boil five pota- 
toes that will constitute the family meal for the 
day. In still another room is a poor woman 
dying with the dropsy, scarcely able to breathe, 
yet sitting behind a washtub upon a broken 
chair, trying as best she can to keep things clean 
and tidy. And so, throughout the house from 
cellar to garret, are men, women, and children, 
huddled and crowded together, enduring the cold* 



FAITH AND MACHINERY. 63 

or the hunger, or the excessive heat, sharing the 
same burdens and sorrows, without hope (for 
there is no hope among such people), and 
waiting, without a single ray of comfort till 
God should close their staring eyes with the 
merciful film of death. It was not a romance or 
a novel ; it was a picture from real life, and there 
wore other pictures like it. And the result of it 
was that Christian men and women in London, 
who had not known or realized the misery which 
existed at their very doors, were moved to go 
and visit the poor and see and learn about them 
for themselves. And as a result of that personal 
knowledge again, more has been done since, in 
the last few years, to mitigate the hard con- 
ditions of the outcast poor in London than all 
that had been done during many years before. 
They saw it, they knew it, and then they 
helped it. 

Well, there are places in New York City, 
Christian friends, almost, if not altogether, as 
sad and dreary as that. Would you be of ser- 
vice to the people living in them? " What is 
that in thine hand?" The power to go and 
see them. It is not far, thirty minutes will 
take you there, to look 14)011 them with your 
own eyes — not somebody's else; to come into 



64 FAITH AND MACHINERY. 

contact and touch with them, and if you do you 
will have no rest and peace ; you will lie awake 
at nights, until you find some way to serve and 
help them. 

Bat perhaps you will not go. That is another 
matter. I am only saying what you can do if 
you will. "What is that in thine hand?" 
Take it and use it with faith in God, with the 
courage that faith in God gives ; with faith in 
God, go use it, and some good result will follow. 

But then you may say, Is not that after all 
impracticable I Circumstanced and situated as 
we are we cannot go among the poor, the very 
worst and lowest poor, and if we did we would 
not know what to do or say to them. Possibly 
so. Very likely. The pastor of an English 
parish, who employed a number of theological 
students to visit among the poor, was asked upon 
one occasion what was the result of the experi- 
ment, and how it worked ? ' ; Well," he replied 
with some hesitation, "it was good for the stu- 
dents.' ' Certainly it is not every person who 
has the talent, shall I call it ? the gift, the tact, 
to work among the poor, even if he had the time, 
and his circumstances permitted. But it is not 
of personal work among them that I am speak- 
ing now, but personal knowledge of them, and 



FAITH AND MACHINERY. 65 

that I am sure the Christian Church must have or 
all its machinery will amount to nothing. All 
it does without that knowledge will be a waste, 
a reckless waste, of time and money. That per- 
sonal knowledge the Christian Church must 
somehow acquire in order to accomplish much 
or do much practical good among them. That 
personal knowledge — why, you know how it is, 
business men — that personal knowledge like 
nothing else will show what ought to be done ; 
will awaken interest, will excite sympathy, will 
create a large generosity, will touch the heart, 
will enlighten the mind, inform the intelligence, 
strengthen the will, and find at last way or ways 
to do some wise and practical work. 

When some case of appealing distress is 
brought to your personal notice and you look 
upon it with your own eyes, and see its pain and 
anguish, and hear its cry for help, and feel it in 
your heart ; is there a man, a Christian man or 
woman anywhere, who would not do what he 
could to help and assist it? That cry comes 
up from children of God, children of God, made 
in his image, from the houses of bondage in New- 
York City to-day. O Cod, let us wot be so 
wrapped up in our affluence and prosperity thai 
we fail to hear it. Make us hear thai cry, thai 



66 FAITH AND MACHINERY. 

pleading, bitter cry ; it lias reason to be bitter at 
times, for it seems as though it were forsaken by- 
heaven and earth and no man pitied or cared — 
make us hear that cry, and then we will try to 
help it and will know what ought to be done. 

Yes, my friends, when the two halves of New 
York City, each of which is now living in igno- 
rance, or comparative ignorance, of the other, are 
somehow brought more closely together, then 
neither half will continue to live precisely as it 
is living. 

We want to solve this problem, we want to help 
the degraded poor, but we know not what to do, 
we say. " What is that in thine hand?" The 
power to obtain a personal knowledge of the situ- 
ation. Let us go and use it with faith in God and 
much good will follow. We will re-enforce with 
a large and glad and willing generosity the ef- 
forts of those who are working among the poor, 
or who by personal residence among them, like 
the settlement of young college women down- 
town, are trying by their culture and their refine- 
ment to create (which is one of the great difficul- 
ties) a better aspiration in the poor themselves. 
We will try to provide public parks and play- 
grounds for the children. We will do what we 
can to prevent fifty little children from being 



FAITH AND MACHINERY. 67 

crowded into one room in a public schoolhouse 
which was intended only for twenty or at most 
twenty-five. We will be willing that the poor 
should have such refining influences as come 
from museums and art galleries, such wholesome 
recreation as is to be obtained from cheap public 
amusements, or such healthful benefit as is to 
be had from summer excursions and outings. 
We will see to it that the downtown churches, 
working in the thick of the battle, shall not be 
deserted without first providing endowment for 
them and seeing that they have equipment suf- 
ficient for their task. We will know just what 
part of the social machinery is cumbersome and 
vain and wasteful and ought not to be helped, 
and what part is doing practical service and 
ought to be assisted. 

Yes, after all, there is much that can be done, 
even with such resources as we already possess. 
Let us not say, Oh, this great problem ! it is so 
hard to solve. Let us not say there is nothing 
we can do, until we do what we can. There is 
enough power in this one congregation to redeem 
the whole tenement house life of New York City, 
and to us, as to Moses long ago, the word of God 
conies, "Go bring my children forth," from 
their houses of bondage to-day. 



68 FAITH A1STD MACHINERY. 

It is a vast undertaking, you say. How shall 
we do it, or who are we, O God, to bring thy 
children forth? And again he says, "What 
is that in thine hand?" Go take it and use 
it ; with faith in God, go use it. 



THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

Thy kingdom come, thy icill be done, on earth as in heaven. 

In commenting recently upon that wonderful 
prayer which Jesus taught his disciples and 
which they have taught us, I called your atten- 
tion to the truth contained in the two opening 
sentences ; namely, the hiding of the Christian's 
power, our Father in the heavens, and the mani- 
festation of that power, in Christian worship on 
earth. 

Worship, however, is not its only manifesta- 
tion. There is an impulse in it toward work, 
and I desire to speak to you this morning about 
that additional impulse created by the conscious- 
ness of the all-embracing Fatherhood, and which 
is so succinctly expressed in the language of the 
text. Or, putting it in topical form, T will ask 
you to consider the coming of the kingdom of 
God. 

The kingdom of God — what is it ? The phrase 
was not original with Jesus. lie found it, when 
he came, current among the people, upon their 
lips, their byword, the thing they everywhere 

69 



70 THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

talked about, as people to-day talk about money 
and business and trade and the fashions. It col- 
ored their thought and pervaded their speech ; 
it was their life, their religion ; and a prayer 
that did not include a petition for the coining of 
the kingdom of God was not, we are told, re- 
garded as a prayer at all. While, however, the 
phrase was not original with Jesus, he put a new 
meaning into it, and made it something quite 
different from what it had been before. To the 
Jew the kingdom of God was nothing more nor 
less than the kingdom of the Jew, whose coming 
would be for him, would minister to his national 
pride, would establish him upon the earth — his 
thoughts, his opinions, his supremacy as a Jew. 
Now, Jesus meant by the phrase something very 
much more. To him the kingdom of God was, 
as its name implies, not the kingdom of man at 
all, whether Jew or Gentile, but the kingdom of 
God. 

And here, let me observe before proceeding 
further with the explanation of the phrase, is a 
wholesome caution for us. Like the Jew in the 
time of Christ, we also j)rofess to be interested, 
and I presume are, to some extent at least, in 
the coming of the kingdom of God. We pray 
for it, we work for it — a little — and we give our 



THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 71 

money for it ; and yet, after all, it may not be 
the kingdom of God for wliich we work and 
pray, but the kingdom of ourselves, our 
thoughts, our opinions, our theological doc- 
trines, our ecclesiastical polities. The Church- 
man wants it to come— yes, very much ; but he 
wants it to come along the line of the Prayer 
Book and the apostolic succession, and to have 
these three orders of the ministry in it : bishops, 
priests, and deacons. 

The Romanist wants it to come, and to express 
itself through the medium of papal infallibility, 
and unless he can see it coming in that way he 
does not see it coming in the world at all. 

The Methodist, the Presbyterian, the Baptist 
— they also have their thoroughfares, their well- 
constructed roads, along which they want the 
kingdom of God to come. 

Now, some of these ways may be right, may 
be much better than others, and I do not mean 
at all to imply that because a person is a zealous 
Romanist or a devoted Churchman or an uncom- 
promising Presbyterian he is not unselfishly and 
sincerely interested in the coming of the king- 
dom of God in the larger sense, lie may be ; 
and yet it is well to remember that nothing is 
more common, more easy, than self-deception, 



72 THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

and that religious zeal, as Carlyle tells us in his 
essay on Voltaire, is often but a little love of 
truth associated with a great love of making 
proselytes. So it was with the Jew, so it has 
been with Christians since, so it may be with 
us. How shall we ascertain whether it is or not ? 
There is one infallible test. Does our religion, 
whatever we call it. separate us or have a 
tendency to separate us from our fellow-men 
and to make us. in a measure, unsympathetic 
with them ! If it does, then we may be sure, 
however sound our faith, however true our 
creed, however great our zeal, that it is not God 
we are trvin£ to exalt, but ourselves in the name 
of God. 

For think a moment. God stands for Father- 
hood, and Fatherhood stands for love — a great, 
strong, protecting, inextinguishable love. Love 
does not divide ; it unites : it draws people 
together ; it is a bond of union than which there 
is none more intimate, more sacred, or of more 
enduring character ; stronger than death, 
mightier than the grave, waters cannot quench, 
floods cannot drown, flames cannot consume it. 
And if our religion does not have the effect to 
touch and quicken the heart with that deepen. 
purest, and most expansive of passions, and to 



THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 73 

send us out in sympathy strong and great toward 
our fellow-men of every shade and grade, of every 
name and creed, call it what we please — Protes- 
tant, Romanist— it is not the religion of Christ. 

The religion of Christ, my friends, is, after all, 
a misnomer. Christ had no religion, in the com- 
mon and ordinary sense of the term ; and 
established no religion. The word religion is 
never mentioned by him. Christianity is not in 
its highest and sublimest sense a religion, and it 
would clear our minds of many perplexities and 
much confusion of thought if we ceased to re- 
gard it as such. Jesus Christ simply introduced, 
or tried to introduce, a new kingdom into the 
world. There were other kingdoms then, as 
there are now, in existence — the kingdom of the 
Jew, the Roman, the Barbarian, the Greek ; 
Christ would introduce another which should 
include them all, binding together the subjects 
of many into the sweet fellowship and sympathy 
of one— namely, a kingdom of love. He calls 
it the kingdom of God on earth, for God is love. 
He calls it the kingdom of heaven on earth, for 
lioaven is love. He calls it the kingdom of 
truth on earth, for truth in its deepest and 
purest analysis, and wherever found in the uni- 
verse, in this world or in others, in the rocks ov 



74 THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

in the stars or in the microcosmic depths of the 
human heart and soul, is but the expression of 
the great All-Father s love. 

That, my Presbyterian friend, is what all your 
profound theology should mean. That, my 
Episcopal friend, is what all your beautiful 
Church polity and Apostolic order should mean. 
That, my Romanist friend, is what all the vast 
and complicated machinery of your admirable 
hierarchical system should mean. If it does 
mean that ; if, like nothing else, it makes your 
heart burn and glow with that great embracing, 
transfiguring passion of love — love for God and 
man— then for you it is right and good : stand by 
it and hold it fast. 

If, upon the other hand, it has the effect to 
alienate you from your fellow-men, from those 
who do not hold your views, who do not share 
your theological or ecclesiastical opinions, then, 
no matter how great your zeal, you may be sure, 
that like the Jew in the time of Christ, you are 
self-deceived — it is your own kingdom you seek, 
and not the kingdom of God. 

And now, having tried to explain what I think 
Jesus meant by the phrase, let me go on for a 
little while to speak of the coming of the king- 
dom of God. 



THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 75 

Jesus Christ introduced it into the world, but 
he did not establish it, and his life went out in 
failure, or seemed at least to do so, and the pur- 
pose that inspired him was not a successful pur- 
pose. And yet full well he knew that it must 
at last prevail, and that, lifted up from the 
earth in the sight of the world as the pure 
expression of perfect love, he would and must 
draw all men to himself. Has he not, in fact, 
been doing so more and more? Look back 
over the Christian ages. What is it that we 
see? Strife and contention and bigotry, per- 
secution and warfare and bloodshed, on the part 
of those who bear the Christian name ! Yes, all 
that we see and deplore, and we will not try to 
cover it up and excuse it ; and yet, despite all 
that and beneath all that, there is something else 
that we see. That man is but a poor and prej- 
udiced reader of history who cannot and does 
not see it, who does not see the advancing 
triumph, slowly, but step by step, of a kingdom 
of love on the earth, which, like the mighty 
ocean tide, held in check for a time and appar- 
ently overcome by the storm, in obedience, never- 
theless to an attracting power that is greater and 
more than the storm, goes rolling steadily on, 
with the llotsam and jetsam of many a wreck, to 



76 THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

be sure, yet rising higher and higher and con- 
quering more and more. 

Hatred and strife we see. Yes, for human 
nature is passionate and weak, and cannot be all 
at once and easily controlled ; but love we also 
see, like sunlight shining through the clouds or 
painting its beautiful bow of promise in the 
arching heavens above them. Bigotry, yes, but 
benevolence. Resentment, yes, but forgiveness. 
The infliction of wrong, yes, but the patient en- 
durance of wrong. And homes are blessed and 
men and women in them, and hospitals are 
established, and slaves are liberated, and the 
weak and the poor are assisted, and the suffering 
are relieved, and works of mercy abound. Yes, 
despite all else, it is the coming of the kingdom 
of God, the kingdom of love, that we see, and 
which Jesus Christ declares will ultimately hush 
the storms of life, will ultimately still the 
tempests and prevail over all. 

Why? Simply because it is the kingdom of 
love, whose law, whose spirit, whose method, 
whose motive power is love. Love — what fear 
can dismay it, what obstacle can stop it? 
Love — it is the omnipotence of the universe 
liberated and set free in the heart of man. 
Love — it is the great alchemist, by which the 



THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 77 

hardest task becomes the sweetest joy. The 
Christian pulpit speaks at times, and delivers its 
message to us, tries to make us see what our 
duty is toward our fellow-men. But duty is a 
harsh and ugly word, and while we listen and 
assent, perhaps, and confess that it is our duty, 
it does not move us much, and, if it be pressed 
too hard, we are irritated and vexed. 

But Jesus Christ speaks and says: "I do 
not want your duty ; I simply want you to 
see, as I see, the sublime vision, rolling across 
the heavens and sweeping across the earth, of 
the great Father's love. Then I know you 
will try, you cannot help trying, to build 
his kingdom up." 

Love — it is the great despoiler that takes 
away our money, then gives it back again in 
more precious and indestructible form. " There 
was an old man who had an abundance of gold, 
and the sound of the gold was pleasant to his 
ears, and his eyes delighted in its brightness. 
By day he thought of gold, and his dreams were 
of gold by night, and his hands were full of gold, 
and he rejoiced in the multitude of his chests. 
But he was faint with hunger and his trembling 
limbs shivered beneath his rags, and there came 
a little child to the old man and said, k Father, 



78 THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

father, I have found a secret ; we are rich ; we 
shall not be poor and miserable any more : gold 
will buy all things.' And the old man was 
wroth and said, ' Would you take from me my 
gold?' " 

Like the man of the parable, we of this age 
have been surrounding ourselves with our pre- 
cious material treasures which, although when 
we get them we often find so disappointing, so 
powerless to feed the hungry soul and warm 
the shivering heart, we nevertheless so dearly 
prize and carefully hoard and guard ; and when 
the little Christ child comes and tells his secret 
to us and says, "Give them away, give them 
away, and then they are yours forever," we 
become Avroth and angry, and say to him in 
reply, "Would you take away our gold?" 

Yet, my friends, is it not a true message ? In 
our little limited experience have we not found 
it so ? It is only when Love, the great despoiler, 
comes and takes away our money that we really 
have it, and that our hearts and souls are warmed 
and nourished by it. We lay it by and hold it 
fast and will not let it go, and Love comes and 
opens the door, and all the treasures fly forth, 
not only in blessing to others but in blessing 
to ourselves. Father, mother, husband, wife, 



THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 79 

child, friend — someone who stands for love — has 
some need, some want, can be made happy by 
us, and we take our dear and precious money, 
our beautiful alabaster box, the sweetest, 
dearest thing we have, and pour it freely out. 
Then we receive it back again an hundredfold in 
deepest, sweetest, purest joy into our hearts. 

Now, that is the power, that alone is the 
power — and that is enough — which Jesus Christ 
reveals, which he brings to bear on the human 
heart. This is the w r eapon which he puts into 
our hand to fight with. Without it we can ac- 
complish but little. Service is a hardship, duty 
is a joyless task, and the work of the Christian 
Church in this world, despite all its admirable 
machinery, will halt and stumble and falter and 
drag and not be done. But the kingdom of love 
appears, the bright and beautiful vision which 
Jesus Christ reveals in the heavens around us we 
see. Its glory touches the heart, opens it wide, 
wider, and awakens a new, strong, and consum- 
ing passion within us. Have we power of speech 
and song? This one thing we do — "Thy king- 
dom come, Thy kingdom come" — and \v<> press 
on toward the mark. Have we talent, scholar- 
ship, learning, health, strength, position in life, 
the strong and manifold power thai lies poten- 



80 THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

tial in money — " Thy kingdom come" is our 
prayer, our great consuming desire. O God of 
love, our Father, take us and use us more and 
more, and make thy kingdom come ! 

Or we have been laid aside and there is noth- 
ing we can do ; some heavy burden of sorrow 
is ours, we are crippled or broken by sickness or 
by age, or are circumscribed by a contracted 
sphere from which we cannot escape — then, O 
God, thy will be done ! Teach us how to be 
patient in our little narrow place, to suffer and 
to wait. 

My friends, as I read the Gospel story and try 
to understand it, that is what our Lord Jesus 
Christ came into the world for ; not to establish 
another among the innumerable religions — call 
it that if you please, and for convenience' sake ; 
but there is a better word : to establish a new 
kingdom on the earth, namely, a kingdom of 
love, whose doctrine is love, whose polity is 
love, whose motive power is love, whose king is 
the King of love, and who puts into our hands, 
not the flag of sect or church or partisan 
theology but the great banner of love, and bids 
us go into all the world and conquer in that 
name. 

Have we seen that vision which Jesus saw 



THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 81 

sweeping through the heavens, and which he 
declared would ultimately prevail over all the 
earth ? Then we have seen the sublimest thing 
which this universe contains ; Ave have seen the 
vision of God ; we have learned the highest 
lesson which God himself can teach, " that life, 
with all it yields of joy and woe and hope and 
fear, is just the chance of the prize of winning 
love." 

Then, when we can truly say, " Our Father in 
the heavens," we can also say, "Hallowed be 
thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done 
on earth as in the skies." 



TEE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. — Romans 
xii. 21. 

I said to you a few Sundays since, on the 
feast of the Epiphany, that the truth which we 
commemorate at the Epiphany season is this : 
that Jesus Christ is the moral and spiritual light 
of the world. Last Sunday I tried to show you 
that he is a light not for a part, but for the 
whole of the world. And I desire to-day to 
bring out and emphasize another side or aspect 
of this same thought, and to direct your atten- 
tion to the fact that Jesus Christ is the light of 
the whole world — not simply in the sense that 
his Gospel is intended for all nations, but in the 
additional sense that it is equally intended for 
all the parts of any particular nation. I wish 
to show you that it is diffusive as well as expan- 
sive ; that here in the society of Christendom as 
well as in the society beyond the borders of 
Christendom, there is an aggressive work to be 
done, and that it is our duty, as the disciples of 
Jesus Christ, to try to overcome the evil im- 



THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 83 

mediately about us — the lingering elements of 
pagan life in our midst — with the positive and 
aggressive good of the Christian religion. 

The subject in other words which I propose to 
consider is this : the relation between the Chris- 
tian believer and the unchristianized features of 
the society in which he is placed. I propose to 
consider it first, in a general way, and then with 
reference to that particular feature of our 
modern society spoken of or know r n as the 
theatre. 

Christian people are sometimes much per- 
plexed to know what course to pursue, with 
reference to certain customs and institutions 
which have come to be a part of the existing 
social regime, and which, although not essen- 
tially sinful, are yet so often productive of sinful 
results and excesses. I do not know anything 
more difficult and embarrassing to the conscien- 
tious Christian, who wants to perform all Ins 
duties in a Christian manner, and to carry his 
Christianity out into all the relations of life, 
than questions of just this sort. They are ques- 
tions, too, which are constantly arising, and 
which no one of us is able to escape. " Shall I 
do this, or shall I not do it? [ntrinsically, 
perhaps, there is nothing wrong in it, and ii 



84 THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 

might be so done and conducted as to be fruitful 
of good ; and yet I know that it is in fact the 
occasion at times, if not to me, to others at least, 
of very serious harm. What then is my duty 
about it, and how shall I act in regard to it V ? 

Now if everything that is bad in this world 
had no good mixed up with it, but were alto- 
gether and irredeemably and unmistakably bad, 
and were so marked and labeled, it would not 
be hard to discover at least on what path we 
should walk ; and although we would still be 
tempted at times to yield to what is wrong, it 
would be a temptation addressed directly to the 
lower, baser, and the more ignoble part of our 
nature. We would know it as such, and the 
consciousness of that fact would have the effect 
to weaken the temptation and to deprive it of 
much of its power. But with reference to the 
great majority of things in which from day to 
day we are called upon to engage, that is not the 
case. They are not altogether bad, nor altogether 
good. Their character is mixed and composite. 
Some persons do them innocently. Others do 
them wickedly. Looking at them from one point 
of view we see how proper they are. Looking at 
them from the opposite point of view we see how 
hurtful they are. And hence it is that we find 



THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 85 

among men, and among good men too, such con- 
flicting judgments concerning tliem — hurtful, 
harmless ; wicked, innocent ; right, wrong ; 
good, bad. Which of these testimonies shall we 
accept ? Which verdict shall we believe ? It is 
the old story over again of the two sides of the 
shield. They are both hurtful and harmless ; 
they are both wicked and innocent ; they are 
both good and bad ; and each of these verdicts, 
if we are candid and fair, and are not hopelessly 
committed to some prepossession and prejudice 
upon the subject, we soon discover and are ready 
to admit to be true. This, however, as I have 
already said, instead of being the end of the 
perplexity, is but the beginning of it ; and the 
question is still on our hands : What course shall 
we, as a Christian people, pursue with reference 
to all those matters of a mixed and composite 
character which we find to be a part of the exist- 
ing social economy, and in which we, from time 
to time, as members of that economy, are called 
upon to engage ? 

Now in reply to this question there are three 
possible answers— three possible policies to be 
pursued. There is first the policy of indiffer- 
ence. "Things are what they are. We found 
them here when we came. We did not originate, 



S6 THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 

are not responsible for them ; nor is it likely 
that we can change them much. Let us be care- 
ful, therefore, to be pure and upright in our 
personal and domestic relations, and as for these 
great and urgent social matters, manners, insti- 
tutions, and customs about us, let us just drift 
with the tide." That is the policy of indiffer- 
ence into which some Christians so easily drop. 

Second, there is the policy of abstinence. 
There is so much that is damaging to the moral 
and spiritual nature in these social pursuits, they 
have the effect in so many instances to harden 
the heart and the conscience, to enhance the at- 
tractions of vice, and undermine the foundations 
of virtue and pure and virtuous living, men are 
so often broken, crippled, ruined for life in their 
character by them, that in spite of the possibili- 
ties which they contain for good when they are 
properly done, it is best on the whole to have 
nothing to do with them. We do not expect by 
this policy, of course, to be able to destroy them. 
We do not think that we will stop them. They 
will still go on, as a part, as a big, vehement, and 
attractive part, of the social life of the world, 
while we are keeping our own skirts clean, by a 
complete avoidance of them, and u laying up 
treasure in heaven." This is the policy of 



THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 8? 

abstinence, the Puritanic policy, as it is some- 
times called. 

There is yet another course, and that is the 
policy of conscientious and discriminating par- 
ticipation in them — the policy which looks up- 
on the Christian religion as essentially militant 
and aggressive, and believes that it is the duty 
therefore of all Christ's disciples, not simply to 
try to get rid of and escape the evil themselves, 
but in the name of their Master to buckle on the 
armor, and go forward and fight, and beat back 
the evil, to dislodge it from its stronghold, to 
drive it out of its territory, and to conquer and 
overcome it with an aggressive good. This, I 
need scarcely tell you, is the hardest course of all. 
It requires more courage and strength, makes a 
man more watchful, puts him more on his guard ; 
just as it requires more courage to engage witli 
an actual enemy upon the field of battle than to 
run away from the battle or to go through the tac- 
tics of a military drill in an armory. And yet, 
hard as it is, nothing less than this, I think, i^ 
the scope of the Christian duty, and by the pur- 
suance of no other course can we hope to perform 
it. This world and every lawful factor in it be- 
long to Jesus Christ. It is cur duly, therefore, 
as his disciples, not simply to be satisfied with a 



88 THE CHRISTIAK AKD THE THEATRE. 

personal avoidance of evil, but to go forward and 
meet it, and though it be through wounds, and 
fatal wounds to some, to overcome it with good. 

And now, having made these general remarks 
upon the subject, which are capable of endless 
applications, and which you can make for your- 
selves, I desire to give you this morning a spe- 
cific illustration of them. 

Ought Christian people to go to the theatre ? 
That they do go, many of them, I am well aware. 
And yet there is a feeling upon their part, more 
or less active and strong, that there is some- 
thing in the going that is just a little inconsistent 
with the Christian character. And this feeling 
shows itself in the fact that while the members 
of the congregation go, they do not think it just 
the thing to- have the minister go — at least some 
of them do not. And if you ask them why, they 
will tell yon, in all probability, that he, by 
reason of his position in the community and in 
the Church, should be more caref ul about his ex- 
ample. An answer which of course condemns their 
own conduct, and which is but admitting, as any 
fair and logical mind can see, that going to the 
theatre is not quite right. For if it is quite right, 
why should anybody be careful about his ex- 
ample ? If it is not quite right, it is wrong, and 



THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 89 

they are doing a wrong tiling in going ; and they 
should be sufficiently logical to see it, and suffi- 
ciently straightforward to acknowledge it. Ah, 
no, my friends, let us not be willing to drop into 
such shallow special pleading and casuistry, such 
"playing of fast and loose " with conscience ; let 
us try for a few moments to look at this practical 
subject in a truer, broader, and more rational 
way. 

What is the theatre ? what is its history ? 
how has it come to be here ? I need not tell you 
that it is an old institution ; that every nation 
has had it ; that it has been a part of every 
civilization. Some friends of the drama have 
traced it back to the time of Moses. This, 
of course, is an uncertain pedigree. And yet 
fragments of a Hebrew play have come down to 
us, founded upon a great and notable event in 
their history — the Exodus of the children of 
Israel from the land of Egypt. The thing which 
strikes us most, however, in connection with the 
rise .of the drama is this: that although we do 
not know precisely when it began, yet in every 
instance where it does appear for the firsl time 
in history, it is associated with religion. This 
was the case in Greece. This was the case in 
western continental Europe, This was the oase 



90 THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 

in England. The drama, in fact, as another has 
told us, was the chief school of morals and 
religion in those primitive times — and to an 
unlettered people, who had no books to read, 
and who could not have read them if they had. 

By means of histrionic representation the 
stories of the Grecian mythology and of the Bibli- 
cal record and literature were made to appear in 
graphic and appealing form, and were imprinted 
deeply, strongly, and ineradicably upon the 
popular heart. Gregory, the Archbishop of 
Constantinople, was himself a playwright of no 
mean quality, and hoped, as Mr. Richard Grant 
White tells us, to banish the pagan drama from 
the Greek stage and substitute plays founded 
upon subjects taken from the Hebrew or the 
Christian Scriptures. 

The first plays that were performed in Eng- 
land were the so-called " Miracle Plays," long 
lists of which have descended to our time, 
containing the names of many, and from which 
Ave can form some notion of what they were like. 
There was a play called "The Creation," 
another representing "The Fall of Man," "The 
Death of Abel," "The Flood of Noah," "The 
Procession of the Prophets," " The Birth of 
Christ," "The Adoration of the Shepherds," 



THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 91 

"The Flight of Joseph and Mary into Egypt," 

"The Slaughter of the Innocents," " The Adora- 
tion and the Offering of the Magi," "The 
Baptism of Christ," "The Temptation of 
Christ," "The Betrayal of Christ," "The Death, 
the Burial, and the Resurrection of Christ," and 
almost every other notable incident in the history 
of our Lord. 

The first performers in these plays were clergy- 
men. The first theatres were Christian churches. 
From the churches, after a while, they passed 
into the yards of churches. Then they got upon 
wheels and were moved about from place to 
place in the country. A distinct and special 
class of professional actors was created. Suit- 
able and permanent buildings were erected. 
Other scenes began to be represented besides 
the stories of Scripture. Forms of virtue and 
vice were introduced on the stage, and the 
"Miracle Plays" were merged in time into the 
" Moral Plays." Thus gradually was the theatre 
brought down into the real, human life of the 
immediate time. Satire came, and wit and 
humor and merriment and laughter and comedy 
made their appearance, to lash with their ridicule 
the Forms of rice, and to enforce the Lessons oi 
virtue and morality. 



92 THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 

But human life is deeper and something more 
than a laugh. It has its storms of passion, its 
blighted hopes and ambitions, its wrecked and 
ruined affections, its sin, its heart-breaking sor- 
row, its deep, bitter remorse ; and tragedy fol- 
lowed in the wake of comedy, until all human 
life was touched with histrionic portraiture. 
The drama became both a literature and an 
art — breaking forth into rich, magnificent, and 
beautiful bloom in the Elizabethan age — and has 
been ever since a deeply rooted and corporate 
part of the Anglo-Saxon civilization. 

Such, in brief, in too brief compass, is the 
history of the rise and progress of the drama. 
Reviewing that history, looking back thought- 
fully over it, we cannot fail to notice and to be 
impressed with the fact that the drama is not 
simply a superficial attachment to our social 
economy ; that it did not come by a process of 
statutory enactment ; that it is not the product of 
any particular age. Like the British constitution 
itself it has gradually grown out of the habits, 
the customs, the manners, the institutions, the 
morals, the virtues and vices, and the very life 
of the people. Therefore, like the British con- 
stitution, like the common law, it has come to 
stay, and to be an organic and integral part of 



THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 93 

the Anglo-Saxon civilization. And if this be 
true, that it has come to stay, that it is a perma- 
nent and abiding factor of our civilization, what 
is the duty of Christian people toward it ? 

That there is much evil, much that is low, 
coarse, base, and disgusting in the drama of the 
present time no good man will question. But 
remember, my friends, that this social world of 
ours, with all of its abiding forces and factors, 
belongs to Jesus Christ. Evil has no right in 
it. It is an intruder here. The world belongs 
to Christ. And it is our duty, therefore, as the 
representatives of Christ, not simply to avoid 
and escape the evil ourselves — by running away 
from the field of battle and taking refuge in 
flight — but to go forward, and fight, and con- 
quer the evil, and overcome it with good. 

But how, practically, may this purifying work 
be performed ? I answer, first, by exercising a 
high conscientiousness in the matter. Every- 
thing that touches and deals with the human 
passions — like music, like oratory, like poetry, 
like art, like the drama — may be and has been 
abused. But instead of denouncing these 
things, let us distinguish carefully, with an un- 
compromising conscientiousness, between the 
legitimate use and the unlawful abuse, giving 



94 THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 

our support and sanction to the one and our 
strongest condemnation to 'the other. This, I 
know, is a difficult course to pursue. But it is a 
difficulty we cannot avoid. It meets us all the 
way through life, in every sphere and relation in 
which we are called to act. Difficult as it is, 
therefore, let us try to perform here the same dis- 
criminating task that we are called upon to per- 
form everywhere else. And instead of resorting 
to the miserable subterfuge of drawing a line 
between the pew and the pulpit — one section of 
the Christian Church going to the theatre care- 
lessly, thoughtlessly, as fancy moves and oppor- 
tunity offers, the other section of the Christian 
Church never going at all, because it should be 
more careful about its example, and ' ' It is not 
quite right" — let us, as Christian men and 
women, learn to distinguish constantly, care- 
fully, conscientiously, between the right and the 
wrong, between the good and the bad. This will 
not completely reform the drama to-day, nor 
to-morrow, nor the day after. But it will have 
the effect to reform it in the end. 

The second method I would suggest is akin 
to the first, although of slower action and of 
more gradual efficacy, and that is : the cul- 
tivation of a purity and refinement of moral 



THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 95 

sentiment, a strength and vigor of intellectual 
culture, that cannot be contented with, and will 
not condescend to anything that is vulgar and 
cheap in quality or coarse and unworthy in 
its intellectual tone. " The social civilization of 
a people," says the Earl of Lytton, " is always and 
infallibly indicated by the intellectual character 
of its popular amusements ; and of such amuse- 
ments the stage is by far the most important." 
And if our modern stage be not of a very high 
character it must be because the culture of our 
modern society is not of a very high order. 

Our one and great ambition up to the present 
time — I speak of the people at large — our one and 
great ambition up to the present time has simply 
been to make and to amass more money. For 
this we have striven and toiled, so engrossed 
with the desperate passion, so wasted and worn 
with the task, that we have left ourselves but 
little leisure for the growth and the development 
of the other parts of our nature. We have had 
no time for intellectual culture. We have had 
no time for literary pursuits. We have had no 
time For scholarly growth and study. We have 
had no time for anything, except with feverish 
haste, and waste of the nervous energy, to try to 
make more money. And then, when the need of 



96 THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 

recreation lias come, we have just dropped for a 
few hours into and taken up with anything that 
happened to be at hand. 

As the nation gets older, as it becomes more 
highly developed, as the people grow in moral 
and intellectual stature, their popular amuse- 
ments will correspondingly grow and become 
of a better character. The drama will then be- 
come again what it has been in the past, to use 
again the language of the Earl of Lytton, " not 
the resort and the amusement simply of the vi- 
cious and the vulgar, but the great and effective 
instrument by means of which the lofty ideals, 
the heroic types of human life, the great and 
strong movements of the human soul, will be 
plainly and prominently depicted before the re- 
sponsive and educated imagination of the peo- 
ple." In the meanwhile, let us try by the cul- 
tivation of a pure moral sentiment, and a high 
intellectual standard, to do our part, gradually, 
slowly, indirectly it is true, yet none the less 
effectively, towards making the drama what it 
ought to be. 

Now, if anybody should infer from what has 
been said this morning that I desire to give more 
laxity and license to the Christian life, it will cer- 
tainly not be the impression which I have sought 



THE CHRISTIAN AND THE THEATRE. 97 

to produce. My aim has been to show yon, 
rather, that the Christian life is not simply the 
singing of hymns and the saying of prayers on 
Sunday, but that it is coterminous with the life 
of all society; that its duty is not exhausted 
simply by a personal avoidance of evil, but that 
it has a militant and an aggressive work to per- 
form, and that into every sphere, every relation 
of the social economy, its aim should be to push 
and drive out, and to keep on pushing and driv- 
ing out, the evil, until at last it has overcome it 
with good. 



HIDING FROM GOD. 

And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the 
Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord called 
unto Adam, and said unto Mm, Where art thou f — Genesis iii, 8, 9. 

In commenting upon these words there are 
two remarks which I wish to make by way of 
introduction. The first is this, that human life 
in the Bible, although in its superficial accidents 
of time, place, circumstance, and other conven- 
tional adjuncts it differs more or less from 
human life to-day, is nevertheless in its funda- 
mental tendencies and dispositions the same. 
The second remark is that the relation of God 
to human life in the Bible, while in some respects 
as there described it appears and is unique, is 
chiefly so in appearance, and is virtually like 
the relation which he is sustaining to it at the 
present time. 

My purpose is to illustrate this morning in a 
particular way these two general propositions — 
to show you that now, as formerly, as ever, men 
are wont to hide themselves from God among the 
trees of the garden where he has placed them ; 



HIDING FROM GOD. 99 

and second, that, in their hiding from him, his 
searching, quickening voice is heard, saying to 
each from time to time, " Where art thou ? " 

First, consider the hiding. Looking at the 
matter theoretically — apart, that is, from what 
experience and observation teach — one would 
naturally suppose that the thought of the great, 
good God, who has made this world and put 
men in it to enjoy it, would be a welcome 
thought, and that in their enjoyment of it, or in 
wandering through and among the trees and eat- 
ing the fruit of the garden, they would be moved 
instinctively with gratitude toward the Giver, 
and would find it a pleasant thing to keep him 
in their minds. Such, however, is not the way 
in which men act or in which they feel toward 
God. On the contrary, they try to forget him, 
to put him out of their minds, or to think of him 
only when by reason of some calamity, sickness, 
or other disaster, or by the approach of death, 
perhaps, they are compelled to think of him. 
Their notion seems to be that God is only for 
emergencies, like that of the good hostess, Mrs. 
Quickley, in Shakspere's " Henry V., " when 
describing the death of Falstafl: ki Po he cried 
out and said, God, God, God, three or four 
times. Now I to comfort him bid him thai he 



100 HIDING FROM GOD. 

should not think of God. I hoped there was no 
need yet to trouble himself about that." 

Her idea was that if, as she hoped and 
believed, or at least would have Falstaff believe, 
he was not going to die, it was quite unnecessary 
and premature to turn his mind toward God and 
religion ; bad as the case seemed, it was not as 
bad as that, she hoped, that he had to think 
about God. 

So it is with many persons now — who think of 
God and religion only when they can think of 
nothing else, when their hold on this world has 
been loosened a little, and they are about to take 
a journey into some other world of which they 
have had no experience, and about which in 
consequence they have some apprehension, as one 
always has when facing the unknown. Then, 
like Falstafl, they cast themselves on God and 
cry out for his help, and send perhaps for his 
minister to come and administer the sacrament 
and show them how to die and cross the border- 
line into the world beyond. As long, however, 
as death and disaster seem remote, they] are 
immersed in this world ; God is forgotten by 
them — or at least they try to forget him — among 
the beautiful trees of the garden in the midst of 
which he has placed them ; and why ? 



HIDING FROM GOD. 101 

Ah, men and women, how true to human 
nature, in every age, from the beginning till 
now, is this wonderful Bible of ours. 

Why? For the same reason that Adam and 
Eve did in the old Genesis story ; they have eaten 
of the fruit of the tree of which God commanded 
they should not eat. They have done and are 
doing still what, as they know very well, despite 
all their attempts at self-justification, they ought 
not to do. They have an evil conscience, 
the sense of guilt is upon them, they are not 
living right, and they know it — yes, they know 
it — and the thought of God troubles them, 
makes them afraid. They try to get away from 
it, to cover it up, to crowd it out, to forget it, 
and so instead of wandering through the garden 
with God, they wander through it without him, 
or try at least to do so ; and what is the result ? 
They are not at peace, as many of you are not, 
and are trying to find a peace in the garden itself, 
which, the garden itself, however big and beauti- 
ful, does not and cannot give. 

Is not that true, my friends ? Look and see. 
See how hard men are trying to find peace to- 
day, and how great the garden is, how exten- 
sive, how diversified, how full of bloom and 
beauty in which they are trying to find it. 



102 HIDING FEOM GOD. 

Oar political economists are telling us — and 
we are listening with complacency to tlieir 
words — how exceptionally great and prosper- 
ous the nineteenth century is, in productive 
plant and machinery, in mineral resources, in 
agricultural fruitage, in commercial exchanges, 
in mechanical skill, in facility of inter- 
course, in rapidity of communication, rail- 
road, telegraph, telephone — our whole industrial 
system, how great, how prosperous it is. It is 
true. Never was a century like it. The world 
of human interest, the garden in which men 
toiled and digged in former days, was compara- 
tively little and barren. To-day it is wealthy 
and fruitful, and cultivated, and easy to get 
about in ! So that if people do not like, or for 
any reason get tired of, one place — Bar Harbor, 
or Lenox, or Newport, or the Pacific coast, or 
Europe, or Paris, or Constantinople — they can 
easily go to another. Or, if they do not go in 
person, they can, in the flash of a moment, send 
their messages there, and the ends of the world 
are brought into communion with them. And 
the products of the earth, of all the earth, gath- 
ered in every clime and country, are made to go 
by car and boat, by wheel and keel, across the 
land and water, in all directions, by them. 



HIDING FROM GOD. 103 

Never was the garden so big, nor were the trees 
in it so beautiful and fruitful, nor men so suc- 
cessful in gathering the fruit of the trees. 

Yet, instead of finding peace in it, that is 
about the only thing which they are not finding, 
and which they seem to be getting farther and 
farther away from. Peace ! why, the word is a 
satire on our civilization. Never was there a 
time when there was so little of it in the hearts 
of men, of all estates and classes, the rich man 
and the poor, the idle man and the busy, the 
professional man and the mechanic, the toiler, 
the thinker, the bread-winner of every class of 
either sex, successful or unsuccessful, as there is 
to-day. It is not a military age; militarism, 
we are told, is past, and in the sense that fight- 
ing on the field of battle is not so frequent as 
formerly, — though the standing armies are big- 
ger, — nor so much resorted to in the adjustment 
of difficulties, the statement perhaps is true. 
Militarism is past, yet none the less it is an age 
of warfare — bitter, relentless, perpetual, univer- 
sal, and the demon of unrest is at its heart. 

Look at the great host of the workmen, as by 
courtesy they call themselves, the men, that i-. 
engaged in manual labor, the demos^ the people, 
the mass, moving on, dissatisfied, toward some- 



104 HIDING- FKOM GOD. 

thing — they know not what, and cannot formu- 
late — but something, nevertheless. which they 
think they ought to have, and which in one way 
or another, by fair means or foul, they are deter- 
mined to get ! Is there peace there, in that part 
cf the garden ? 

Look at the great captains of industry — the 
men who have been successful, who have gath- 
ered the spoils, and are rich ! Their one feverish 
ambition, inflaming them more and more, and 
which like the rod of Moses is devouring every- 
thing else, is to find new fields of conquest and 
to gather further spoils. Is there peace there I 
Why, it is difficult to say in which of the two 
classes of the nineteenth century industrial life, 
the top or the bottom, the rich or the poor, there 
is the greater unrest. 

Leaving the dust of toil and the vulgar noise 
of the street, look at some of the cultivated spots 
in the garden. Look at the so-called fashionable 
world, which, despite its kaleidoscopic brilliancy 
of movement and conventional activity, has so 
little natural charm and originality in it — which 
lack of originality I presume Goethe had in 
mind when he satirically described good society 
as "that condition of life which furnishes no 
material for poetry," and which led Mr. Adding- 



HIDING FROM GOD. 105 

ton Symonds to say, "How hardly shall they 
that wear evening clothes and ball dresses enter 
the kingdom of art," — Is peace dullness: is it 
the synonym for inanity ? 

Look at the political world, where the feeling 
" I am as good as you and better " is the active 
and turbulent force ; where wisdom is determined 
not by weighing heads but by counting them, no 
matter how little is in them ; in which the ver- 
dict of yesterday is sure to be changed to-mor- 
row because there are more heads and perhaps 
as ignorant coming up to be counted, as if the 
pacification of human society were to be found in 
popular elections and plebiscites: — Is peace 
there ? 

Or still again look at the philosophical world, 
at the leaders and captains of " modern thought," 
who, in studying the phenomena of the universe, 
the heavens with their telescope, and the earth 
with their geological hammer, and human life 
upon it with their materialistic analysis, find so 
often nothing but matter and force, no spirit, no 
God — oh, my friends, with the burdens of life 
upon ns and the miseries of life around us and 
the sharp cri<>s of distress and pain from so many 
quarters coming into our ears, and a strange 
dark journey awaiting us : Is there peace there I 



106 HIDING FROM GOD. 

So if we should go throughout the whole 
garden of modern life, the conclusion would be 
more vividly impressed upon us that while men 
are finding in it almost everything else to-day, 
they are not finding peace. Why ? Because it is 
not there. No, men and women, it is not there. 
Peace does not come from without; it comes 
from within ; from communion with a life which 
does not change — which is the same yesterday, 
to day, and forever. It comes from God, from 
the consciousness on the part of men that they 
belong to and are the children of Gf-od ; that 
despite their sin, their disobedience, their un- 
worthiness, He who made the garden and put 
them in the midst is their friend, and holds them 
fast and loves them with a strong, eternal love. 
That gives peace, and that alone gives it. And 
so we come to the other side of that old human 
story, in the garden of Eden, that the great God 
of the universe, who knows better than we where- 
in our peace consists, is forever searching for us 
in our hiding from him, and saying to each from 
time to time, as to Adam and Eve, " Where art 
thou?" 

In how many different ways do we hear his 
voice ! Adam and Eve heard it in the Genesis 
story, and we also hear it. 



HIDING FROM GOD. 107 

We hear it at times in the very quiet and 
stillness of the garden — when wandering in the 
summer, as some of us have been recently doing, 
along the ocean beach, or through the quiet 
wood, or under the evening sky — far away from 
the haunts of men and the clatter and the noise 
of the city ; a longing deep and pure is awak- 
ened in us that w r e know T not how to express. 
Yes, we hear it then, and a sweet quickening 
influence as from some more beautiful world be- 
yond the earth and fairer than the firmament 
over it seems to come and touch our hearts, and 
"thus give us note that through the place we see 
a place is signified we never saw," but to which 
nevertheless we belong. We are lifted up in- 
stinctively to the thought and feel the presence 
of God and seem to hear his voice. 

Or we hear it at other times, not in the silence, 
but in the disturbing and affrighting noises of 
the garden — the fierce strife of the tempest, the 
mighty roar of the winds, the tumult of the war 
of the elements, when the trees are swept by the 
wind, and the bolts of the lightning fall "as if 
God's messenger, through the close wood-screen, 
plunged and replunged his weapon, at a venture, 
feeling for guilty thee and me; then breaks the 
thunder like a whole sea overhead." The search- 



108 HIDING FROM GOD. 

ing God has found us. Trembling in our hiding- 
place, which is a hiding-place no longer, Ave seem 
to hear his voice saying to us, " Oh, man, oh, 
woman, where art thou ?" 

Or we hear it, not in the world without, but in 
the world within ; in our affectional nature ; in 
our human love, which when purest and best 
always seems to have a touch of the Infinite in 
it, as though it were God himself whom we were 
trying to reach ; or as though it were his voice 
speaking through the broken accents of our poor 
earthly affections and saying, "Give me thy 
heart!" 

Or in our moral nature we hear it, in those 
admonitions of conscience from which we cannot 
escape, though we try, and which, notwithstand- 
ing our efforts, still have dominion over us ; or 
when through that strange and subtle law of asso- 
ciation — the sight of a place or a person, the 
sudden and unexpected happening of an event, 
a word, a sound, a fragrance, the breath of a 
flower, the note of a bird — the old past life comes 
rolling back ; and the memory of some forgotten 
sin, some base betrayal of manhood, some 
cowardly desertion of principle, some guilty in- 
dulgence, revives. Then it is that we seem to be 
lifted up with fear and trembling to the thought 



HIDING FROM GOD. 109 

of a Holy God, and to hear his voice, saying, 
" whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap." 

We hear it again, when we have learned from 
experience that a life of self-indulgence does not 
give the satisfaction which we thought it would. 
We hear it when we meet with reverses and the 
blight has come into our garden, and the bitter- 
ness of death is upon us. We hear it in that 
sadness, that strange, dreamy sadness, which 
seems to be associated with success in this world 
even more than with failure ; or when, with the 
consciousness of our moral defects and blemishes, 
our insincere, tortuous, selfish, disingenuous con- 
duct, we are suddenly brought face to face with 
some pure and noble character, some brave and 
generous action, and wish that we might have 
done or might have been like that. In all these 
different ways does the thought of God break in 
upon us in our hiding from him, and we are made 
to hear his voice saying, "Oh, soul of man, soul 
of man, where art thou ? " 

But sweeter and more appealing than all is 
the voice of God speaking to us in the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ. Hearing his voice in the world 
without or in the world within, the sound of it 
makes us afraid. We know that we are not 



110 HIDING FROM GOD. 

clean and pure. We have broken his laws, and 
sinned, and eaten time and again of the fruit of 
the forbidden tree ; and although we cannot 
escape him, we would do so if we could. But 
hearing his voice in Jesus Christ saying to us, 
" I love you, I forgive you ; no matter what you 
have been and done, or what you have failed to 
do, I love you with a love which nothing can 
change and from which nothing can sever — 
neither life with all its risks, nor death with all 
its uncertainties, nor angels, nor principalities, 
nor powers ; nor things present nor things to 
come — from which nothing can sever": that 
gives peace. It gave it once to a man of the 
first century, troubled and tried on every hand, 
and who felt himself to be the chief of sinners, 
and it can give it now to a man of the nineteenth 
century. 

May you and I, my friends, hear that voice of 
God ! The garden in which we are living is big 
and beautiful and fruitful. Let us get out of it 
all that we can ; let us try to make it bigger and 
more fruitful ; but let us not try — for we cannot 
do it — to hide ourselves from God in it, or to find 
in the garden itself a peace which the garden 
itself, however big and beautiful, does not and 
cannot give. We have tried the worldly method ; 



HIDING FROM GOD. Ill 

let us go back and try the old method of the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ, and in all our seeking, 
let us seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and in 
all our wandering through the garden let us 
wander through it with God. 



MASTERSHIP. 

The Master is come. — St. John xi. 28. 

There is in this world a genuine mastership 
which everybody respects and gladly acknowl- 
edges. There is also a spurious and counterfeit 
mastership, a false simulation of the real, which 
secures no lasting homage and fails to accomplish 
the purpose at which it aims. This morning I 
shall try to point out the difference, in my judg- 
ment, between them, or, more precisely and par- 
ticularly, shall address myself to the considera- 
tion of the question, How do our masters come ? 
What are the conditions of their coming, and the 
marks of their supremacy ? 

First, I observe, the master comes by birth. 
God sends him. The God who has made men's 
faces to differ so that no two of them are alike, 
however closely twinned, has also endowed their 
natures with diverse germs of power, which cir- 
cumstances may strengthen or awaken, but can- 
not create. The greatness or the smallness of 
every person in mental and moral stature and in 
the scope of his personal influence, is decided for 
him at the outset as strictly as it is decided for a 

112 



MASTEKSHIP. 113 

fruit, to nse Mr. John Ruskin's simile, whether 
it shall be an apricot or a pear. 

The subsequent influence of external surround- 
ings will determine whether the growing apricot 
shall fall as a shriveled green bead, blighted by 
the breath of the fatal east wind, and contradict- 
ing its early promise, or whether it shall expand 
into a tender joy and beauty, exhaling a per- 
fume delicately rich and clad in the sweet bright- 
ness of a golden velvet vesture. But the apricot, 
whether shriveled or ripened, is only and always 
an apricot, and the pear and the acorn and the 
pine cone, and their counterparts among men 
and women. 

That people, therefore, differ from one another 
is not so much due, as in this age of extravagant 
faith in the power of environment we are apt to 
think, to the manifold character of their circum- 
stances as to the manifold wisdom of God. No 
one can exercise a masterly prerogative and 
power in this world except he has first received 
it as a birth endowment from God. 

Nor does it matter much where or in what 
place he is born, — the crowded metropolis, the 
isolated farmhouse, the inland (own, the city by 
the sea, a stable, a manger, a cattle trough,- the 
great thing is he is born, and if circumstances 



114 MASTERSHIP. 

give the opportunity and the other conditions are 
realized, of which I will presently speak, he will 
in due time be heard from. 

That is the first condition — the master comes 
by birth, God sends him. 

The second is by baptism, and when I say by 
baptism, I use the word as it is used in connec- 
tion with Jesus Christ, which signified in his 
case not the acquiring of new power, but the 
awakening of his human consciousness to power 
already possessed. When, therefore, I say that 
baptism is the second condition of mastership, I 
mean the coming to the consciousness of what 
one is and has, and of what he can do with. it. 
Otherwise, although he may have it, he will 
have it as though he had it not. 

You remember the story which Thackeray tells 
in his " Vanity Fair," of the great, strong, stal- 
wart fellow, who is cuffed and kicked and tor- 
mented and shamefully treated by every boy in 
the school, and does not dare to resent it. Upon 
one occasion, however, driven to bay and exas- 
perated beyond all endurance, he turns and faces 
his foe and fights and, to his own surprise and 
that of everybody else, conquers. From that 
day on, having been baptized or born again into 
the consciousness of the strength he possessed, 



MASTERSHIP. 115 

the coward is a hero, the champion of the school, 
a soldier in the army, an officer in the regiment, 
a veteran in the service. He finds his tine career 
in this world, and moves with distinction in it, 
only when he has first found and taken posses- 
sion of himself. 

The incident is fiction and yet it is real life. 
Are there not many like him whose faculties, after 
slumbering in undisturbed repose, have sud- 
denly been awakened by some new need or 
emergency, some new responsibility, some public 
calamity perhaps, like the breaking out of a war ; 
and who except for that would never have known 
what they were and what they could do, and 
never would have done it ? Except for that they 
would have remained unknown to themselves 
and the world — clerks in little village stores, like 
the one in Illinois ; teachers more or less ob- 
scure in military academies, like the one in 
Louisiana ; lieutenants in the army, occupying 
obscure military posts, like the one in Oregon or 
Texas, or quiet country gentlemen living upon 
their farms, like the one which is now the shrine 
of the American people, on the banks of the 
Potomac, in Fairfax County, Virginia.* 

'• This sermon was preached on the 22d of February, and the 
references here are i<> Generals Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and 
\\ ashington. 



116 MASTERSHIP. 

The occasion did not make these men. God 
made them, for the same occasion confronted 
others also, but the occasion came and awakened 
them and made them see and feel and take pos- 
session of themselves — revealed them to them- 
selves, and they then revealed themselves to the 
world. As it is in affairs, so is it also in letters. 
The Trojan war did not make a Homer, but it 
awakened him, made him see who and what he 
was, as he had never seen before, and then the 
world in the immortal Iliad saw ! 

The exile from Florence did not make a Dante, 
but it made him conscious as nothing else before 
had done of the genius hidden within him, which 
conscious possession of his genius enabled him to 
produce that Divine Comedy " that startled 
Europe from her somnambulism of a thousand 
years." 

The Bedford Jail did not make a John Bunyan, 
but it made him see and know as he had never 
known before who John Bunyan was, and, 
coming thus to the consciousness of his deeper, 
stronger self, he produced the wonderful story 
which has cheered and comforted so many Chris- 
tian hearts in their pilgrim progress toward the 
Celestial land. 

Yes, in letters as in affairs, in every line of 



MASTERSHIP. 117 

conduct, in every department of thought, it is 
not from the men who have power merely, but 
from the men who know they have it, that the 
greatest achievements have come. By some fact 
or incident they have been made to perceive 
it, to know it, to feel it, to use it. Their con- 
fidence in what they could do has given them 
courage to do it, or at least to attempt it. They 
were not intimidated as other men by its perils 
and risks. They have crossed the trackless 
waters, explored the unknown continents, led 
the way into a darkest Africa or out of a darkest 
England, and their faith in themselves has given 
to others faith. 

It is true that often, very often, men have been 
mistaken, have had altogether too much confi- 
dence in themselves, and so have egregiously 
failed. But is it not equally true, on the other 
hand, that men have often failed to do what they 
might have done because they have not had 
enough confidence in themselves ? They have 
never done much good in the world simply 
because they never knew how much good they 
could do. They have not perceived or realized 
the power that God has given them. They are 
not up to themselves and the measure of their 
opportunity, like a man who lias made a fortune 



118 MASTERSHIP. 

but does not know how to use it, and does not 
see the great and potential blessing in it. 

These then, it seems to me, are the conditions 
of mastership : First, the possession in fact of 
some born gift or a capacity ; and second its 
possession in consciousness. The person must be 
born with power, and then born again, or bap- 
tized, and awakened into the knowledge of that 
power. 

But this is not all. For after a person has 
found himself, who he is and what he can do, he 
must then sink, lose, obliterate himself in some 
great work or cause that takes him outside of 
himself, and this is the third condition — burial, 
or death. 

Some great cause must come, some great duty 
appear, which touches and kindles his heart 
and lifts him out of himself ; which more than 
himself he loves ; and to which with a consuming 
passion he must devote himself. There is no 
personal mastership or greatness in this world, 
nor ever will be, without it. Some great and 
strong enthusiasm must come and take pos- 
session of the force, the talent, the genius, 
that has been awakened in him — patriotism, 
truth, righteousness, the welfare of his country, 
the good of his fellow-men, or the spread of the 



MASTERSHIP. 119 

Christian Gospel, and the establishment on the 
earth of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. 

Then he may be strong and know it, and yet 
know it all the while as though he knew it not 
— no vanity, not the slightest, no arrogance in 
his knowledge. With St. Paul he may honestly 
feel how far short he comes and how unworthy 
he is, because, like St. Paul, he is not measuring 
himself with other men in this world — that were 
a petty and contemptible task — but with the 
great work, the great cause or calling which is 
forever before him beckoning him on and on, to 
which with genuine consecration he has given and 
devoted himself, in which he has buried himself. 

And yet he is not buried or does not stay 
buried, for from that grave he rises with the 
glory and greatness of the cause itself shining 
forever upon him. He becomes identified with 
it ; he seems to be to his fellow-men the incarna- 
tion of it, and thereafter, when they think of 
it, they always think of him who has embodied 
it to them, and all the ideal virtues which it 
represents are a halo around his brow, and all 
the great blessings for which it forever stands 
are a chrism upon his head. 

The measure of their love for it is their love 
for him, and the enthusiasm which it inspires is 



V20 MASTERSHIP. 

kindled by his name. This is the king's high- 
way, on which the greatest of the earth have 
walked. The history of the world is simply the 
history of their influence and of what they have 
done. Other men and women have seemed to 
take some part in it and have taken some part in 
it, but it was these masters, these great ones, 
who inspired them, lifted them up, sent them on, 
and helped them to do their work. 

" A cork float danced upon the tide we saw 
This morning 1 , blending bright with briny dews. 
There was no disengaging soaked from sound, 
Earth product from the sister element ; 
But when we turn the tide will turn, I think, 
And bare on beach will lie exposed the buoy. 
A very proper time to try with foot and rule, 
And even finger, which was buoying wave, 
Which merely buoyant substance ; power to lift 
And power to be sent skyward." 

Like that of the little cork float is the power 
of the many, the power to be lifted, to be taught, 
to be guided, to be sent. The power of the few is 
to lift the multitude and to send them skyward. 

" How quickly and readily," says Emerson, 
"do we enter into their labors and take posses- 
sion of them." " Every ship that comes to 
America got its chart from Columbus ; every 
novel is a debtor to Homer ; every carpenter 
who shaves with a foreplane borrows the genius 



MASTERSHIP. 121 

of some forgotten inventor ; life is girt all round 
with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of 
men who have perished to add their point of 
light to our sky." 

This, then, is the way the masters come. First 
by birth endowment. God sends them. Then 
the baptismal awakening and consciousness of 
themselves. Then the effacement, burial of 
themselves in their consecration to some great 
calling of God. Birth, Baptism, Burial. 

The American people have recently been 
reminded of some great names * which sug- 
gest the conditions of a masterly character to 
which I have referred. God gave them power, 
rare power ; the occasion came and awakened it, 
and then — it is no rhetorical exaggeration to 
say — with a rare sacrifice they merged and buried 
themselves in their country's cause, and the 
glory of this nation hereafter among the nations 
of the world will be their glory, too. 

I have in my mind this morning one pre-emi- 
nent Master — the master of us all — who, by his 
influence in this world, has proved himself to be 
sue]). The story of his wonderful birth is not 
incredible to me. It seems (o fit and be con- 
gruous with his still more wonderful character. 

* Generals Grant and Sherman. 



122 MASTERSHIP. 

The story of his wonderful baptism — the 
heavens opening and a voice giving divine com- 
mission to him as the eternal Son of the Father — 
is not strange to me, and if I had been standing 
then on the banks of the Jordan, knowing what 
I now know of the wonderful power of Jesus 
Christ, I would have expected to hear such a 
voice. 

The story of his wonderful death— his meek 
and quiet submission, although, as he says, and 
I believe, he might have summoned legions, of 
angels to his defense ; the mocking, the scourg- 
ing, the crown of thorns, the cry from the 
Cross, "It is finished," the darkness over the 
land, the veil of the temple rent in twain — it is 
what I would expect, it is the kind of death 
that I would expect one so supremely great to 
die, who had come to give himself for the world, 
and who, in consequence, has been ever since the 
world's Master. 

Yes, the Master is come, and calleth for thee. 
Do you hear ? Will you heed ? Like the 
member of the Bethany household, to whom 
the words were first addressed, will you arise 
quickly and go to him ? 



WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 

And Enoch walked with God, and he was not : for God took 
him. — Genesis v. 24. 

This verse appears in the earliest extant 
genealogical table. It is called the book of the 
generations or descendants of Adam. A very 
great longevity is attributed to these descend- 
ants ; each of them is stated to have lived many 
hundreds of years — one of them nearly a thou- 
sand. That they actually did live as long as 
that, some of you might find it a little hard to be- 
lieve. Nor is it, in my judgment, important that 
you should believe it. It would not do you any 
good nor help you if you did ; and yet the Bible 
is meant to help you. How does it help you 
here, and what is the lesson taught % If you will 
read the chapter you will find that it is a record 
of many very long lives — Jared, and Seth, and 
EnoSj and others — which, although so long, 
<'iid(3(l at last in death; and of one relatively 
\< i ry much shorter life, Enoch's, scarcely more 
than one-third as long, which did not end in 
death. And this is the reason given : "Enoch 

128 



124 WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 

walked Avith God" ; and this is the lesson 
taught, that the life which walks on earth with 
God, although in comparison with others it may 
seem to be much shorter, does in fact outlive 
them all, and is longer, for that is life, indeed, 
a life that has no death in it, a life that does 
not die. It is of that deathless life that walks 
on earth with God that I desire this morning to 
speak. 

Walking with God : the phrase to-day has an 
obsolete sound, and the thing itself seems 
strange ; and as we hear it spoken our minds go 
back to the past, and we think of apostles and 
prophets and martyrs and the old-time saints and 
hermits and recluses and anchorites, when the 
world was not so big, and its affairs were not so 
numerous, and its interests were not so absorb- 
ing. Then indeed it was possible for men to go 
off somewhere by themselves and search and 
study the Scriptures, and read their books of 
devotion, and watch and pray and meditate all 
day long and reflect on things eternal. Then 
indeed it was possible for men to walk with God, 
and they did walk with God, and if we had 
been living then, we too might have walked with 
God. 

But we are living now, and the situation is 



WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 125 

different, is altogether different ; and here in 
New York City, for instance, with all its push 
and rush and drive, and all its social demands 
and all its business exactions, its numerous 
affairs and cares, that have to be constantly 
looked after, and which, if not constantly looked 
after, will surely go wrong and astray, and per- 
haps get hurt and wrecked, and we too get hurt 
and wrecked — here in our New York City life, 
how can we walk with God ? Is- it not simply 
out of the question ? Say our prayers all day ? 
Why, we have scarcely time to say our prayers 
hurriedly and perfunctorily for a few moments 
in the morning before we rush down-town upon 
the rapidest transit that we can find, and throw 
ourselves again into the maelstrom there. 

Now this may all be wrong, unwise, unhealthy, 
undesirable ; we may wish that it were not so ; 
but it is so, and how are we going to change it ? 
Well, we cannot change it ; and if w r e are to 
walk with God to-day, we must learn to do so 
under those conditions which the life of to-day 
imposes, for Ave cannot get out of the present 
and we cannot reproduce the past. And not by 
trying to go apart from temporal duties and 
tilings, —that is impossible,— but while dwelling 
in them, we must manage somehow to be quick- 



126 WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 

ened and helped and guided and gladdened by 
things that are eternal. 

And so we may be, and not by going apart, 
but here and now where we are, in the very 
thick of affairs, with all their crowding and pres- 
sure, with all their racket and noise — we may 
hear the voice of God, and find and feel and have 
him, and walk in communion with him. How? 

A good many people seem to have the notion, 
and I suspect some of you have, that in order to 
get where God is they must do so by making a 
journey of some sort, by a process of locomotion, 
by going to somewhere else than where they are 
at present. " God is not here," they say; 
u God is there, or there ; or, if he is here, he is 
not so much here as he is there " ; not so much 
down-town in the office of the lawyer or the 
banker, or the counting room of the merchant, 
or the floor of the Stock Exchange, as he is up- 
town in one of the churches on Sunday. 

And as long as they feel that way, of course 
they do not try very hard — perhaps do not try 
at all — to find him in the office, or the shop, or 
the bank, or the counting room, or on the floor 
of the Stock Exchange ; for w T hat is the use of 
trying to find him when he is not there, or is not 
much there ? There is no use ; and as a result 



WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 127 

of this localizing of God and going on journeys 
to meet him, there has come to be a localizing, or 
what I may call a provincializing, of religion, as 
though it were something that did not appeal to 
the real life of the world, but something to be 
done and practiced outside of it, or more par- 
ticularly outside of it, at particular times and 
seasons, when we get sick or when we are in dis- 
tress or trouble, or when we think that we are 
going to die — a local thing, a sectional thing, a 
provincial thing, to be taken up and used when 
the occasion comes, and then laid down and care- 
fully put aside until the occasion comes back 
again. 

And looking at religion in this provincial way, 
men speak of it with a provincial speech ; as 
when we hear them say, and we not infrequently 
do : " Business is business, and religion is 
religion ; they belong to different spheres, have 
different rules of conduct and different standards 
of judgment, and they must not be confounded ; 
for business is business, and religion is religion." 
Well, the man who talks that way may know 
something of what business is, but he has not the 
faintest conception of what religion is. For 
religion does not mean to walk without God on 
the world's great noisy through fares six days 



128 WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 

out of seven, and then for a few hours on the 
seventh to walk with God. 

No ; what religion tells us is this : that God is 
everywhere, equally everywhere ; just as much 
in the office, the bank, the store, the shop, the 
counting room, the drawing room, the ballroom ; 
just as much on the floor of the Stock Exchange 
as he is in St. Bartholomew's Church or in any 
other church. And why ? Because you are 
there, and where you are, God is ; the place in 
which you dwell is consecrated by you, or by 
the God who is in you. It is helpful, indeed, 
most helpful, to turn aside at times to some 
particular place — the closet of prayer, the 
church — and there to think about God; and 
the place or the building devoted to that is a 
sacred place and a consecrated building ; but 
you must be careful not to consider it conse- 
crated in such manner that when you go away 
from it you go away from God. 

No, no. God goes where you go ; where you 
journey, he journeys ; where you walk, he 
walks; where you are, he is; "in thyself is 
God," is the teaching of the Christian Scrip- 
tures — " Say not in thine heart, who shall ascend 
into the heavens to bring him down from above ; 
who shall descend into the deep to bring him up 



WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 129 

from beneath ; in thy month, in thy speech, in 
thy heart, in thyself is God." Keep your heart 
pure, keep your thought pure, keep your speech 
pure ; when you go to the public banquet, when 
you go to the private dinner, when you linger 
around the table after the ladies have with- 
drawn, and engage in friendly and familiar talk 
and tell your stories there, keep your thought 
pure, keep your speech pure, let no unclean 
communication, suggestion, or insinuation come 
out of your mouth. There is the place to walk 
with God, not here ; there at the dinner table is 
the place to walk with God, and that is the way 
to do it. 

Or when you have withdrawn, you women, 
and are talking about your friends and gossiping 
about your neighbors, and are tempted to tell 
little scandalous stories about them, refrain and 
chasten your tongue, have a care to your speech, 
put charity into your heart ; that is the place 
and way for you to walk with God. 

And so throughout all life, my friends, 
throughout the whole range of conduct ; as you 
meet one another in trade, in society, in manag- 
ing your affairs, ordering your households, 
projecting your plans, making your big busi- 
ness deals, and trying to enlarge the scope of 



130 WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 

your calling and to make it a more profitable 
and a more fruitful thing — but I need not 
specify ; everywhere there is a voice divine with- 
in you ; you can hear it if you will — be true to 
it and let it speak. There is a light divine within 
you — be true to it and let it shine. There is a life 
divine within vou — be true to it and let it win, 
though you lose something else, however dear, 
that you want to have and keep. That is 
religion, that is to walk with God. 

Did you think it was something else, some- 
thing different from that ? that it w r as a raptur- 
ous, beatific, ecstatic sort of thing, possible for 
people who lived in the olden time w T hen the 
world w r as not so big, and possible for some 
people now perhaps, who, like clergymen and 
others, are supposed to live a little apart from 
the real life of the w^orld — but, situated as you 
are, hardly possible for you without making a 
radical change in your circumstances w r hich you 
are not able to make ? No, no. The path on 
which to w r alk with God is just that plain, prac- 
tical, prosaic, commonplace path on which you 
are walking every day. And walking there with 
purity, with truth, with honor, with high char- 
acter, you are walking with God just as much 
as any apostle or prophet or martyr ever did, 



WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 131 

or any Scriptural hero or any traditional 
saint. 

I look forward to the last great day, and it 
seems to me I can see one coming up to the gates 
of the beautiful city. It is not an angel or a 
seraph with shining robe and a crown on his 
head and a golden harp in his hand, making 
sweet and rapturous music as he passes along. 
It is not a saint out of the calendar, with a halo 
around his brow, who looks as though he had 
just come out of the oratory after long prayers 
and fastings and vigils. It is the image and 
form of a man, who looks as though he had just 
come out of the shop or the office or the counting 
room at the end of the task of the day — and the 
dust of toil is on his clothes, and the marks of 
work are on his hands, and the lines of care are 
on his face ; but he seems to hold up his head as 
though he had not wronged or defrauded or 
slandered his neighbor, and there is a look in his 
eye which seems to say: "I have been square 
and honest and true with my fellow-men " ; and 
I ask, Who is this man, and why is he here 1 
and I seem to hear a voice which says : " Lift up 
your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye 
everlasting doors, and let him come in and enter, 
for this man has walked with God." 



132 WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 

Yes, that is to walk with God. It is just to 
cast ourselves upon God and to try to be loyal 
and true, wherever we are, to the light divine 
within us, to the life divine within us, and to let 
it win and shine. Hard ? Oh, yes ; it is very 
hard, and sometimes costs us very much ; but all 
high living is hard, and it is just as feasible and 
possible to-day as it ever was in the past. 

Now, let me say, as briefly as possible, just 
two or three things about this life that walks 
on earth with God. 

And, first, it witnesses to its own reality, and 
proves itself by itself and needs no other proof. 
How do we know that the physical life is a 
reality ? Because we are living the physical life, 
because we are physically alive. How do we 
know that the mental life is a reality ? Because 
we are living somewhat the mental life, because 
we are mentally alive. 

There may be somewhere in the universe some 
other form of life than the one which we are liv- 
ing, but if there is we do not and cannot know it, 
and if we should hear it spoken of and described, 
it would be but a name or a word, mystic, nebu- 
lous, without any meaning. There may be in the 
universe somewhere such a thing as angelic life, 
angel life, but we do not know what it is and 



WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 133 

cannot know what it is. Why ? Because we are 
not angelically alive, we are not angels ; and if we 
are to know that the angel life is real, it can only 
be by having the angel life living in ourselves. 
That is the way to know, and the best, if not the 
only, way to know that the God life is real. 
The man who does not live it much is the man 
who does not believe in it much. It is to him 
but a name ; God is to him but a name, full of 
sound, and perhaps fury, but signifying nothing. 
But to the man who does live it, who tries in the 
midst of common work and task, business 
engagements and social fellowships and private 
conversations, to be obedient and true to what is 
purest, noblest, and best within him — not best 
at the moment, it may be, but ideally best — 
to him God is very real, and the life of God 
in the soul is real, and he believes it because 
he lives it, and he needs no proof to confirm it, 
no argument to make it sure ; it witnesses to its 
own reality. It witnesses also to its deathless 
reality. " If a man die, shall he live again ? " 

Thousands of years ago that question was 
asked, and who since, by argument or by demon- 
stration, has answered it, or who has come back 
from beyond the grave to give the answer \o it i 
And yel For yon and for me that is fast becom- 



134 WALKING WITH GOB TODAY. 

ing the greatest and tlie intensest of all ques- 
tions, which, as we see our friends go away and 
realize that we ourselves will presently have to 
follow, breaks forth at times into a bitter cry 
that almost breaks the heart. Yet where is the 
answer found? Science says, It is not in me. 
Scholarship says, It is not in me. Philosophy 
says, It is not in me ; I may suggest an answer, 
may make it seem most probable that human life 
goes on and.is not conquered by death, but con- 
quers and overcomes it; but fully, clearly, 
assuredly the answer is not in me. 

But why look to philosophy, why summon 
scholarship to help ? In ourselves is the an- 
swer. Living or trying to live day after day, 
hour after hour, in obedience to what is purest 
and best and divinest within us, the assurance 
strengthens, grows, till it becomes more certain 
than any fact in history, than any truth in phi- 
losophy, than any law of nature, as certain as 
ourselves, that it is an indestructible life ; that, 
whether long or short, God has it, holds it, keeps 
it, and that it can no more die than God himself 
can die. 

Then it is no longer hard, but easy, to believe 
in the declarations of the Bible and the testimony 
of Jesus Christ, for the testimony of Christ is 



WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 135 

confirmed in us. Then our human existence 
here, this rapidly flowing current, seems not like 
a dark river of death rushing out and exhausting 
itself in loss, but like a river of life, coming as 
from under the throne of God, deep and wide 
and broad, going down out of sight for a little 
while and buried in the earth, but appearing, 
rising again as a purified stream, and flowing on 
and on with larger scope and volume upon the 
other side. Then do the apparent inequities and 
perplexities and strangenesses of human life seem 
more clear, and in the midst of trial and loss and 
sacrifice we will cast ourselves upon the God 
within us and wait for some diviner light, some 
diviner life to come. To some, as we see things, 
it seems to come too soon. And we can ill afford 
to lose them. 

We can think of such a one this morning,* for 
he did help us ; he helped us very much, and we 
would have kept him with us ; but in the prime 
of his manhood, in the very joy and flush and 
vigor of his work, one morning he was not ; he 
walked with God, and God took him, and God 
has him. He had him here, and he has him 
there, and keeps him and holds him there ; for it 
would put us to permanent moral and intellectual 

* Preached the Sunday after the death of Phillips Brooks, 



136 WALKING WITH GOD TO-DAY. 

confusion to believe that such a life can go out. 
God keeps him there in the fullness of his death- 
less personality, and as a quickening and living 
influence he also keeps him here to help us, while 
we linger behind, to walk on earth with God 



THE MORAL CONFLICT ; AND ITS 
SIGNIFICANCE. 

There was war in heaven. — Rev. xii. 7. 

These words, as I understand them, do not re- 
fer to the future — their reference is to the pres- 
ent. The war of which they speak is a war 
here and now, and the heaven of which they 
speak is a heaven here and now. For what is 
heaven in the Bible use of the term ? Not pri- 
marily a place, but a state or condition of being ; 
or, if it be a place, it is a place where God is sup- 
posed to live and dwell, and God may live in us 
here and does live in us here. He lives in us 
here and now, however, not fully and continu- 
ously, as we hope he will hereafter, but partially 
and imperfectly, with fitful gleams and flashes. 
His life in us now is associated with struggle ; it 
involves effort and fight. There is war in it, and 
yet just so far as his life is in us it is heaven, and 
the declaration of the text I take to mean that 
the effort or fight which we make here and now 
to keep and assert the life of God within us, or 
to keep and assert it in the world at largo, is 

187 



138 THE MORAL CONFLICT. 

heaven's fight, God's fight, God's war. Let us 
make that thought our theme. 

And first let us note the fact, commonplace 
enough, that all the moral and spiritual progress, 
and all the mental progress, which men have 
reached in this world, they have reached through 
warfare, and that conflict always has been and is 
now the condition, the inexorable condition of 
growth. Man, I suppose, might have been made 
to grow in wisdom and in goodness without con- 
flict, or he might have been made in these 
respects full-grown at the outset — wholly wise 
and wholly good, and we wonder sometimes why 
he was not, but he was not, and he has had to 
struggle and to fight every inch of his way. 
Browning, you remember, describes his status 
thus : 

Lower than God who knows all and can all ; 

Higher than beasts which know and can so far 

As each beast's limit, perfect to an end, 

Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more ; 

While man knows partly but conceives besides, 

Creeps ever on from fancy to the fact. 

And in this striving, this converting air, 

Into a solid he may grasp and use, 

Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone — 

Not God's, not the beasts' ; he is ; they are. 

Man partly is, and wholly, hopes to be. 

That is not only fine poetry, it is hard fact, as 



THE MORAL CONFLICT. 139 

you and I have found out, and however else or 
otherwise we might have been made and placed, 
we have been in reality so made and placed and 
circumstanced in this world that conflict is the 
condition, the inexorable condition, of growth. 

But why engage in the conflict? why, when it 
is so hard, should we make this effort to grow in 
moral and spiritual stature, to make ourselves 
good and better, to make others good and better, 
to make the world and ourselves stronger, purer, 
wiser, freer from the moral entanglements and 
the moral enslavements of sin ? Why, I say, 
when it is so hard, should we make the effort to 
grow, and without abatement keep on making 
the effort ? If we could only reach that desirable 
consummation, that fullness of moral stature, by 
making a little effort and doing a little work and 
giving a little thought and time and attention to 
it, by a word or a wish or a resolve ; then I pre- 
sume we would all be ready enough to attemj^t 
it. But the effort it requires is hard, and the 
work it imposes is hard, and the task it pro- 
scribes is long and slow and militant — a struggle, 
a fight, a conflict; and this continuous con- 
flict, this perpetual fighting to make ourselves 
good and better, and to make others good and 
better, becomes wearisome and we get tired of it ; 



140 THE MORAL CONFLICT. 

and why should not you and I just make up our 
mind to accept the world as it is and to accept 
ourselves as we are ? We are pretty good, fairly 
good, respectably good ; we might be worse ; 
and the world after all is not so bad ; it too 
might be worse, and this continuous struggling, 
striving, fighting — why should we not stop it I 

Well, I will tell you why. and why, when we 
once vividly realize what it is and what it sig- 
nifies, we do not want to stop it. It is God's 
fight ; and by that I do not mean that it is the 
fight that God has commanded us to fight and in 
that sense his fight — no, not that. Neither do I 
mean that in some providential way or ways, by 
various providential methods or means, he is 
fighting for us, fighting on our side, and in this 
manner helping us — no, not that, though that 
too may be true. What I mean is this, that God 
is fighting in us, not for us merely, but in us ; 
that every moral progress which we make in this 
world is God's progress; that every moral vic- 
tory which we win in this world is God's vic- 
tory ; that when, for instance, for some immedi- 
ate advantage and gain, or for some momentary 
relief or easement in an embarrassing situation, 
we are tempted to tell a lie, or to act a lie. as 
you and I are tempted every day, we yet resist 



THE MORAL CONFLICT. 141 

the temptation and do not lie, it is the God in 
us that does not lie — it is God's victory in us. 
When we are tempted to say a harsh and sting- 
ing word, to utter some unkind and uncharitable 
speech, with a little bit of venom and spiteful- 
ness in it, in regard to some neighbor or friend, 
we resist the temptation and do not do it, 
it is the God in us that does not do it — it is 
God's victory in us. 

So throughout the whole range of moral 
action, work, behavior, character, conduct, the 
holding of our tongues, the keeping of our tem- 
pers, the curbing of our passions — patience, 
purity, courage, self-denial, self-restraint — bear- 
ing with patience and fortitude the burdens we 
have to bear, performing with diligence and 
rectitude the duties we have to perform, it is 
something more than patience, courage, purity, 
duty attempted and done — the name for it all is 
God, the life, the glory, the victory, the manifes- 
tation of God. 

In the heaven up there or out yonder, or 
somewhere in the universe, in which you and 1 
hope some day to dwell, God is revealed fully— 
knows all, can nil. There is no moral growth, 
no moral progress in him. Bui here ho is being 
revealed and being revealed through us, and the 



142 THE MORAL CONFLICT. 

moral growth, and progress which we make in 
this world, and the moral and spiritual stature 
which is reached by us in this world, is the 
moral and spiritual stature which is reached by 
God in this world. 

Is not that what the doctrine of the incar- 
nation teaches or ought to teach, not simply 
that in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ is 
God, but that in flesh and blood is God ; in him 
fully, without moral limit, without moral ob- 
scuration, and yet in us too, in flesh and blood, 
in all flesh and blood — that that indeed is the 
treasure which these bodies hold — God, which 
day after day we may look and search for and 
dig and delve and toil for, and in these bodies 
find. 

Now as long as we do not know that that is 
the treasure which these bodies hold, that that is 
what the moral life which Ave have within us 
means, that that is what it is, we are like a man 
who possesses but possesses ignorantly a valu- 
able piece of land. There is gold in it but he 
does not know that there is gold in it, or does 
not know gold when he sees it. He knows it 
when he sees it refined and purified and assayed 
and separated from the baser metals with which 
it is associated, but he does not know it in the 



THE MORAL CONFLICT. 143 

quartz or in the sand, and he thinks that what is 
really gold is simply muddy rock or yellow dust 
and dirt ; and why should he spend his time 
and strength in digging up this yellow dirt and 
dust? But an expert comes and tells him that 
that yellow dirt is gold, of the finest sort and 
quality, that the land he owns is full of it, that 
it is a treasure-mine and that he may be very 
rich. Then how he goes to work, and with 
what zeal and industry and patient endurance he 
works ! And the labor which was so hard and 
difficult before, if not indeed so useless, engages 
all his energy now and becomes a labor of love. 

So, my friends, do we go on from day to day 
with feeble, scattering purpose, with halting, 
broken aim, digging, delving, toiling away at 
the moral life within us ; but it is a long and 
hard task, and we get tired and discouraged, and 
seem so often to accomplish nothing, and it 
hardly seems worth while. But Jesus Christ 
comes and shows us what it is — that moral life 
within us ; shows us what it means ; that that 
moral life which we have within us is God — the 
God who made and governs the worlds; that 
that is the treasure, greatest, richest, sacredest, 
treasure, of the universe, God, which these 
bodies hold. At present it is mingled with other 



144 THE MOEAL CONFLICT. 

properties there, with baser things and qual- 
ities, as the gold is mingled with the dirt or 
embedded in the quartz. And yet the treasure 
is there, and in everything we do, in every word 
we utter, in every emotion or passion that sways 
the soul, in all speech, action, work, behavior, 
we may, if we try, find it ; and seeing and 
knowing what it is we are encouraged to try. 

The task is still hard, and we have to struggle 
and fight, and so often to fight alone with no one 
else to see, in our little secret obscurities, in our 
little secret dwelling-places, with no one else to 
know how hard it is, no one else to help and 
cheer us on and applaud us. Yet we see now 
and know what that treasure is which we are 
fighting for ; and the evil desire ungranted and 
the evil word unspoken and the self-indulgence 
restrained and the passionate speech suppressed 
and the lust of the flesh denied, the cause good 
and right, that seems so hopeless, helped — it is 
God ; it is the gold, men and women, separated 
from, purified, refined, coming out of the dirt, or 
out of the hard and rocky quartz, and making us 
very rich. That is the treasure which we have 
within us. Let us see and call it that. Then we 
shall know what our conduct means, and what 
our conduct is, Then we shall know what it i§ 



THE MOKAL CONFLICT. 145 

we are doing or what we are failing to do ; 
that when we give expression to the moral life 
within us we are giving expression to the God 
within us ; that when we reveal and body 
forth that moral life in our flesh and blood, that 
when in doubt and darkness and perplexity we 
yet believe and trust in and cast ourselves upon 
that moral life within us, we are believing and 
trusting in and casting ourselves on God ; that 
when we disregard it, and are careless and 
heedless about it, when we think it of little 
worth, when we neglect it and throw it away, 
we are thinking God of little worth, we are 
throwing away the greatest treasure which this 
universe can give us, and has given us— we are 
throwing God away. 

Yes, let us so understand it. That effort we 
make to have the moral life appear is the effort 
we make to have God, the King in his beauty, 
appear in our flesh and blood, or rather it is God 
in us, fighting to make himself appear. 

And now, for two or three minutes, let us 
look at the subject in a somewhat different light. 
We have looked at it chief! 3^ so far with reference 
to ourselves ; let as look at i( aowwith reference 
to the world at large. For nol only in as Chris- 
tian people here this morning is God's war going 



146 THE MORAL CONFLICT. 

on, but everywhere, all over the world, God's war 
is going on. For everywhere, all over the world, 
we see the moral life, not very much, it may be, 
not very strong in some, and yet we see it in all, 
no matter how degraded, sunken, fallen, low, 
some moral life we see, and we see it fighting in 
all. For there is no man, however bad, who does 
not try sometimes to be good and to do right. 
And that moral life which we everywhere see is 
God's life, and that moral fight which is every- 
where going on is God's fight. Everywhere, all 
over the earth, God's war is going on. 

Then when you and I engage in that war and 
conflict, what is it that we do ? We are not 
simply responding to the aj)peal of man — we are 
responding rather to the appeal of God in man. 
The man perhaps does not make any appeal, 
does not ask our assistance, does not want our 
assistance, does not send a message to us and 
say in so many words, Come over here and help 
me ; but God is saying in the man, Come and 
help me. And the less the man himself appeals, 
the more does God in the man appeal and ask 
our help. We seem to hear his voice speaking 
to us and saying, The passions of this man are 
so fierce and strong, his ignorances and his weak- 
nesses are so many and great, that I am shut 



THE MOKAL CONFLICT. 147 

up as in a prison, and cannot get out and appear 
and take possession of him ; come help me to 
open wide and break in sunder these prison 
doors, and be no longer enslaved but to become 
victorious in him. 

To try to help those who are trying to help 
themselves — that is not only an easy but a wel- 
come and pleasant task. We love to help those 
who are trying to help themselves. But ah, 
that poor creature in whom God is so fast 
imprisoned, that vagabond, that tramp, that 
fraud, that unworthy fellow, in whom the moral 
resolutions are so weak and the animal passions 
so strong, whether we find him at some Rescue 
Mission — a poor forlorn creature who wanders 
shivering in out of the cold to get a little warmth 
and cheer and see what he can work us for, or 
whether we find him as a cruel savage among 
the red men of Western America, or the black 
men of Central Africa, that is the man whom 
you and I are to help. Yes, that is the man we 
must help, and just because the moral life is so 
weak so feeble in him, and we seem to hear the 
voice of God in the man, saying with strong and 
argent appeal, I am so fast imprisoned heie thai 
I cannot get out; come and help me. It is the 
Gk)d in him appealing to the God in us. 



148 THE MORAL CONFLICT. 

But then I know what you will say — I have 
heard men say it a hundred times : After all it is 
such discouraging work, it is such a dishearten- 
ing task. We do try to make such persons 
better, and for a little while we seem to accom- 
plish something, we seem to touch or kindle some 
little spark or flame of the moral life within 
them, but it goes out and does not stay kindled, 
and they are sober and true and honest and pure 
for twenty-four hours ; then they fall back and 
go astray again. It is not always so, although 
very often it is, but what then ? why, for twenty- 
four hours God has won a victory in this world. 
Isn't that something? Isn't it much? And 
who knows what inspirations those twenty-four 
hours have produced, that may linger on and on 
and echo in that soul, and at last perhaps reclaim 
and bring it back again. 

Cannot you remember, some of you older men 
and women, what a thrill of exultation went 
through your hearts when the news came from 
the seat of war in Virginia or Tennessee that a 
victory had been won. You knew and the 
soldiers knew that the war was not over, but it 
was a victory if only for a day, if only for 
twenty-four hours, and then the soldiers went at 
it again and fought for another victory. 



THE MORAL CONFLICT. 149 

So in that moral life, that moral fight 
which is going on in the world — here in New 
York City and there in distant China, in 
darkest, remotest Central Africa, it is some- 
thing, it is much, if only for a day, for 
twenty-four hours, God wins a victory ; and 
then we will go at it again and fight for 
another victory. 

And we will not be discouraged if sometimes 
we are defeated, for it is God fighting in us— the 
God in us helping the God in them to fight. It 
is God's fight, it is God's war, and God will win 
in the end. As St. John from his vision-place 
looked down upon this earth, at the righteous- 
ness which was there, at the goodness which was 
there, at the moral life, the life of God, which 
was there, he saw that in that heaven there was 
war and would be war. But he also saw as in a vi- 
sion that that war would end in peace and victory. 
And he heard a loud voice in heaven saying, 
" Now is come salvation and strength and the 
kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ. 
Rejoice, heavens, and ye that dwell therein." 
Who of us can tell what that heaven will be, 
where there is no war, that ultimate triumph and 
issue of the moral life within us? but, surely, 
men and women, something very wonderful and 



150 THE MORAL CONFLICT. 

very great it must be. Let us cast ourselves now 
on this moral life that is fighting and struggling 
in us, let us cast ourselves on the God in us ; 
then some day we shall know what that heaven is 
in which there is no war. 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE OP GOD. 

Now I have prepared with all my might for the house of God the 
gold for things to be made of gold, and the silver for things of silver, 
and the brass for things of brass, the iron for things of iron, and 
wood for things of wood ; onyx stones, and stones to be set, glisten- 
ing stones, and of divers colors, and all manner of precious stones, 
and marble stones in abundance. — 1 Chronicles xxix. 2. 

These words were spoken by David the King, 
and refer to the building of the temple, a struc- 
ture whose completion he would not live to see, 
and yet he knew that it ought to, and would in 
time be built — God in some way had assured him 
of it. In the light of that knowledge there- 
fore, that assured and confident hope, he devoted 
himself to accumulating the material which the 
building of the temple would need, which would 
in some way enter into its process of erection — the 
gold for the things to be made of gold, the silver 
for the things to be made of silver, the marble 
for the things to be made of marble, the wood, 
the iron, the stone for the various things and 
uses to be made of them. That, he felt, was his 
work in the world and the task he had to per- 
form, and to that task he addressed himself with 
a vrvy commendable zeal. But was it only his ; 

161 



152 BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 

is it not also ours ? I am very strongly of the 
opinion that something like it is ; and because I 
think so I will ask you this morning to think 
about it. 

First, let us consider what that temple stood 
for, or what it was to stand for and what it was 
meant to be. In an architectural sense it was 
meant to be, and when finished it was, a very 
imposing structure, and perhaps no architectural 
pile, or at least no sacred pile, erected since, has 
surpassed it, unless it be the one which when this 
was destroyed was built in its place. And none in 
all probability will ever be erected — no mosque, 
no basilica, no cathedral, not even the cathedral 
of St. John the Divine — of more imposing char- 
acter, of more beautiful and attractive appear- 
ance. And standing on some neighboring 
height, as the Mount of Olives, for instance, 
when the sun arose and cast his chrism of glory 
over it — its spacious courts and corridors, its 
broad expanse of roof, covered with burnished 
pikes, it looked, as one enthusiastic writer has 
described it, like u a mountain of snow fretted 
with golden pinnacles," or as illuminated with 
tongues of fire. It certainly was architecturally 
a very magnificent structure, of which the 
patriotic Jew might well indeed be proud. 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 153 

And yet it was not this, its physical beauty 
and splendor, that made it so dear to his heart. 
That temple was to him and to all the Jewish 
people the dwelling-place of God — of the God 
who had been with them when they were in the 
desert ; who had brought them forth from Egypt 
and led them at last in safety into the promised 
land ; the God wdio had fought their battles, and 
Avon their victories for them, and who had been 
from the very beginning in all their history. 
This was to be his dwelling-place, his palace on 
the earth, his seat, his throne, from which he 
would give his orders and issue his decrees, and 
mold and shape the national life and try to 
make it more and more the embodiment of 
himself. 

This w r as what that temple meant and signified 
to David and to all the Jewish people. And 
they who helped to build it were not helping 
merely to put up in their midst a vast monu- 
mental pile, whose noble and admirable form 
would appeal so effectively and so pleasingly to 
their civic and national pride — they felt that 
they were helping to build on earth a home (or 
God, and that all the offerings which they made 
were offerings made to God. 

And what those people in thai old time tried 



154 BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 

to do in their way, you and I and all of us 
should try to do in ours. Their task should still 
be ours, their ambition ours, and the purpose 
that touched and quickened their hearts and set 
their souls on fire, should also touch and quicken 
us and set our hearts ablaze. And that temple 
which we are building or trying to build — what 
is it? Not primarily an ecclesiastical or a 
religious structure in the technical sense of the 
term, as it was in the case of the Jews ; our 
task is not simply to cover the land and the 
face of the earth with chapels and churches 
and cathedrals, — that of course is important, 
— but the task we have to do is something far 
greater than that. We are not merely to build 
houses of worship for God. We are to build 
factories, and warehouses, and produce ex- 
changes, and railroads, and shops, and banks, 
for God. Or rather we are to see and feel that 
these and the activities which they represent, 
our industrial works and employments in con- 
nection with them, our social and professional 
engagements, our buying and selling of goods, 
our practicing of medicine, our arguing of cases 
in court, our going out to parties and balls and 
evening receptions, our meeting together in club- 
houses — to see and to feel that the whole of our 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 155 

complex and growing civilization, oar diver- 
sified social life with all its varied equipment, is 
not our temple merely — to contribute to our 
comfort and to minister to our pride : but some- 
thing very much more. We should recognize 
the fact that our manifold civilization is chiefly 
the temple of God — that the purpose of God 
is in it, that the purpose of God pervades it, 
that it is indeed or ought to be the growing 
temple of God, and that it is our task or ought 
to be, to try to make it such and to contribute, 
each in his way, some needed material for it — 
the gold for the things to be made of gold, the 
silver for the things of silver, the marble, the 
wood, the iron, and the stone for the things to be 
made of them. But what does that mean % you 
ask, and in simpler and plainer speech what are 
these things of w r ood and iron and stone and 
silver and gold which we are to contribute to 
this great temple of God ? Let us see. 

Here Ave are this morning, representing differ- 
ent kinds of employments, different trades and 
professions, and we are placed in different 
spheres. Some oC us are in professional life — 
students, artists, physicians, lawyers, and clergy- 
men. Some of us, on the other hand, are in com- 
mercial life — bankers, brokers, manufacturers, 



156 BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 

and merchants. Now in connection with all 
these different forms of activity there are dif- 
ferent duties to be done, and different obstacles 
to be met, and therefore, in and through them 
all, different kinds of temptation to encounter. 
Theoretically and in the abstract these temp- 
tations may be the same, but practically and 
in the concrete they are not the same. They 
move along different lines, they approach us 
from different quarters, they charge and assault 
us at different points of attack. They do not 
come to me in the same manner precisely in 
which they come to you, or to put it the other 
way, they do not come to you in the same 
manner in which they come to me. But they do 
come to both of us. Yours may be of the finer, 
mine of the baser sort ; yours perhaps of the 
spirit, mine perhaps of the flesh, and the moral 
exhibit made by you in overcoming yours, and 
the moral exhibit made by me in overcoming 
mine, may be as gold and silver to wood and iron 
and stone. 

So too with the responsibilities that come to us. 
Those which are met and carried by you are 
not the same as those which are met and carried 
by me. Yours may be far greater and of much 
more importance than mine ; and the greatness 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 157 

and the value of yours with reference to the 
value of mine may be as the value of gold to 
the value of wood and stone. And yet, what- 
ever their value, and however they present them- 
selves, they come to all of us. In our different 
ways and places you and I have to meet them 
and bear them, and to work them out and dis- 
charge them. And not by doing what others are 
doing or what they have to do, but by doing 
what we have to do — that is the thing — by 
doing what we have to do, and by doing it faith- 
fully and well, or trying so to do it, we con- 
tribute something— not much, it may be, but 
something — not as of gold and silver, but as of 
wood and iron and stone, toward that great 
temple of God which is going up on the earth, 
toward making this world his house, his home, 
the palace in which he dwells. 

And not only is it our varied personal influ- 
ence, of different temptations conquered, and 
different duties done, and different responsi- 
bilities discharged — not only is it our varied 
personal influence which Ave contribute to the 
temple of God, although in the task of making 
this world his dwelling-place that is a most help- 
ful contribution, but there is something more. 
These different places and spheres yield different 



158 BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 

material results of different worths and values, 
as of gold and silver and wood and iron and 
stone. And yet, whatever their worths, they are 
not chiefly ours, but first and chiefly God's. 
And never, I am convinced — not only because 
Jesus Christ has said so, but because experience 
has proved it so — will we hold them right, will 
we use them right, and never will we fully enjoy 
them until we learn to hold and use them, not 
as treasures chiefly which we have gathered for 
ourselves, but as the material which God has 
variously distributed and apportioned out and 
placed in our possession, that we may make 
contribution of it in some appropriate way, in 
some needed way, toward the building up more 
and more of his temple on the earth. 

That, it seems to me, is what you and I are 
here for. That is why we are placed in differ- 
ent stations and spheres, with different duties 
and opportunities and temptations and responsi- 
bilities ; that each of us may contribute some 
kind of material, yet all of it needed, the wood 
as well as the gold, toward that great temple 
of God, toward making human life on earth, 
and all human life on earth, the dwelling-place 
of God. 

We ask ourselves sometimes — who has not 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 159 

asked himself ? — as we look into the deep myste- 
ries of the skies, Are the other worlds inhabited ? 
Those suns and planets innumerable that across 
the plains of heaven, " we know not whence, we 
know not whither, in long, continuous procession 
stray" — are they too peopled with intelligent 
beings ? Possibly they are ; it has always seemed 
to me that probably they are, and that those 
who inhabit them are not living without God, 
but in subjection to him — that there in the 
heavens about us the temple of God is com- 
plete. But here is a world, which in its moral 
and spiritual life, its aims, its purposes, its 
practical everyday ambitions, seems to have 
wandered away from God, and is not yet his 
dwelling-place, as it ought to be, and as perhaps 
the worlds about us are. Does it mean this, 
does it have any reference to this, when our Lord 
is spoken of as the shepherd leaving the ninety- 
and-nine and going to seek the one that is lost 
and gone astray ? Is there a reference here to 
our world in its relation to the other worlds? 

But whether or not it be true that this is the 
only one of all the worlds about us where the 
temple of God is not yet completely built, cer- 
tainly we cannot be wrong in thinking thai if 
Got! has a purpose about this world at all, it is 



160 BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 

to make it his dwelling-place, and that it is our 
joy and should also be our task to lielp to make 
it suck. That, it seems to me, is what you and 
I are here for. That, it seems to me, should be 
our life in this world. And what largeness 
does it give to our conception of life, our trade, 
our business, our calling, our profession, what- 
ever it may be, to look at it in this manner ; and 
how little, how petty, how narrow does it 
become — the biggest work and the biggest busi- 
ness — if we do not so regard it ! 

We try to make it bigger by spreading it out 
more, with more to do and manage and attend to 
and look after and think about, with more 
activities and things in it, but alas! we only 
succeed so often in making it, not bigger and 
larger, but only more wearisome and fussy. The 
difference between one person and another in a 
little business or a big business seems to me 
oftentimes to be just this : that while one of 
them does a few little things the other does a 
good many little things. One of them writes 
three letters a day and the other writes thirty, 
but after all it is only letter-writing. One of 
them goes to two committee-meetings and the 
other goes to eight, but yet after all it is only 
a committee-meeting. One woman goes to five 



BUILDING THE TE3IPLE OF GOD. 161 

afternoon receptions and another rushes breath- 
lessly and hurriedly about and tries to go to 
fifteen, and yet it is only an afternoon reception, 
pleasurable enough, enjoyable enough, yet not 
in itself the biggest and sublimest kind of occu- 
pation. 

But ah, my friends, put God into it ; try to 
feel that the work you are doing in the world — 
the letter-writing and the committee-meeting 
and the visiting and the receiving — is the work 
which God himself has given you to do. Then 
everything is big and sublime — the letter-writing 
and the committee-meeting and the social visit- 
ing ; and you have the consciousness that you 
are contributing some needed material to that 
great temj)le of God which is going up in this 
world, that you are helping him to build it. 

It gives a greater enlargement to life : it also 
gives it a greater value. Don't we often have 
the feeling, the sad and depressing feeling, that 
in spite of all our efforts to make ourselves of 
some kind of importance we are after all but of 
little worth and value to the world, and that it 
would go on just as well without us ? And so 
from Ihe world's point of view it'would, and if 
we are living only for what the world can do for 
us or what it will think about us or what il is 



162 BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 

thinking about us now, we are flattering our- 
selves with a vain and delusive hope. For the 
world is far too busy to-day to think very much 
about us, and will be hereafter too busy to think 
very long about us. And the people will hurry 
down- town in the morning and back again in the 
evening and the streets will be noisy and crowded 
just the same as now — how strange it seems! — 
and someone else will be in our place and we will 
have vanished and gone. 

No, no. ISTo one else can take our place now 
or hereafter. In the thought of the world, in 
the business of the world, yes — but not in the 
business of God. Commissioned by him, sent by 
him to do some special work which no one else 
can do, to contribute some special thing which no 
one else can contribute, yet all of it needed — the 
wood, the iron, the stone, as the silver and the 
gold, we are building the temple of God, and 
helping more and more to make the earth his 
home. 

Enlargement, value, and unity will it give to 
human life, to all our rent and torn and divided 
human life, when each man learns to take it 
and receive it and live it as from God. Some 
will work in one way and some will work in 
another, some as in wood and iron and stone, 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 163 

and some as in silver and gold. But they will not 
be jealous of one another or fight and strike and 
pull down and interfere with one another. Hand 
in hand and together they will fly toward the east 
and gather the spoil of the west, for they will 
all be workers, each in his place, for God, as sent 
and commissioned by him to try to build his 
temple up and make this world his dwelling- 
place. Not in our time will that temple be built 
completely, but it will be built some day, and we 
can help to build it. And not only so, but if 
the angels in heaven can somehow see and rejoice 
over penitent sinners here, may not we perhaps 
somewhere in the universe, we know not where, 
but somewhere, see the structure finished which 
we have helped to build, and mingle our voices 
with the shoutings of those who cry, Grace, 
grace unto it, when the headstone shall be 
brought forth at last and the world in which we 
are living now shall have become the temple 
of God ! 



PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOD'S. 

Arid Abraham said unto God, that Ishmad might live before 
thee! — Genesis xvii, IS. 

Somehow 3 we know not how nor is it very 
important to know, the Lord appeared unto 
Abraham, and said that he would make him the 
father of many nations. That was both a wel- 
come and a credible announcement, for it is 
always pleasant to be told, nor is it so hard to 
believe, that one's posterity may become distin- 
guished and great. But there was another part 
of the announcement which was not so welcome 
nor so credible, and that was the declaration 
that the numerous descendants promised him 
would not come from Ishmael, who was then his 
only child and quite a well-grown lad, but 
through another son who was not then born. 
That was the part of the announcement wliicli 
he could not receive and credit, or not for a 
while at least, and as the story tells us, he fell 
on his face and laughed an incredulous laugh 
and said in his heart. Shall a child be born unto 
him who is one hundred years old i And Abra- 

164 



PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOD'S. 165 

ham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live 
before thee, and that he, the son I have, might 
be indeed my heir, and that through him thy 
word, thy promise might be fulfilled ! Here we 
have our subject — the disposition of the human 
heart, now as then and always, not to ignore God 
altogether, but to try to substitute for the way 
of God some other way of its own, which, if not 
better, seems at least more practical and more 
easy. 

Let us look at that for a little while. First 
let us look at it in connection with religion. 
We sometimes hear it said and sometimes per- 
haps say it ourselves, that there is a great reli- 
gious indifference to-day, that a great many 
people are not interested in religion, that they 
do not care about it, and do not very much 
or very often think about it. That, in my 
judgment, is a great mistake. People do think 
about religion, they cannot help thinking about 
it, they cannot keep it out of their thoughts, and 
as life goes on and experience deepens and 
ramifies, they ask religious questions concern- 
ing themselves and others — their friends, their 
neighbors, their children, those they have loved 
and lost. Where are they? Where have they 
gone? What has become of them? Why were 



166 PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOD'S. 

tliey taken away? Will we ever see them again, 
and when, and how, and under what conditions? 

People ask these questions, and these are 
religious questions. 

Or looking out on the world and lifting up 
their eyes to the starry heavens above them, or 
turning in their gaze and seeing and feeling the 
majesty of the moral law within them, they find 
themselves asking questions concerning God as 
the Author of the starry heavens above and the 
Source of the moral law within — who he is, what 
he is ; if you please, whether he is at all. Such 
questions people do ask and must ask, and these 
are religious questions. So that if people think 
at all, they must think about religion, they must 
at times move in thought along religious lines. 
No ; people are not uninterested in religion to- 
day — it is the one great theme above all others in 
which they are interested, as they always have 
been in the past and will be in the future. It is 
not so much a tendency toward religious indif- 
ference which we see upon the part of people at 
present — religion as a permanent factor in the 
thought of the world will always take care of 
itself — but a tendency rather to substitute for 
the way of God in religion some other lower, 
cheaper, easier way of their own. 



PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOD'S. 167 

The thing, for instance, at which religion 
chiefly aims is conduct, not toward the forming 
of creed, but toward the forming of character ; 
not toward the putting of thoughts and theories 
into the mind, but toward the putting of purities 
and charities into the heart, and cleanness into 
the speech, and nobleness into the purpose, and 
self-denial and truthfulness and virtue and holi- 
ness into the soul, and righteousness into the 
life. That is the thing at which religion aims, 
or at which chiefly the Christian religion aims. 

But that is hard and the other thing is not 
hard, or is not at least as hard. It is not nearly 
as hard to be orthodox as it is to be good. It 
is not nearly as hard to fight for a theory as 
it is to embody a principle. It is not as hard 
to hold a right and true opinion as it is to 
be true and to do right. And therefore Ave try 
to take the way that is not so hard, and in that 
manner to satisfy the religious instinct in us. 
And instead of offering up and presenting our- 
selves unto God, we offer our creeds to God, our 
orthodoxy, our churchmanship, our soundness 
in the faith. We offer our creeds to God as a 
substitute for ourselves. That is so often our 
way of trying to become religious our easy, 
cheap, more appealing way, our Ishmael, which 



168 PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOD's. 

we try to substitute for the harder way of God, 
and like Abraham, as Mr. Matthew Arnold says, 
quoting the words of the text, we seem to say 
in our hearts, Oh, see our churchmanship, our 
orthodoxy, our zeal for the faith— let Ishmael 
live before Thee ! 

That is the tendency we see and which in our 
hearts we feel ; not a tendency toward religious 
indifference, — people are not indifferent to relig- 
ion, they cannot be, — but a tendency rather to 
substitute creed for character, theory for prac- 
tice, dogma and doctrine for conduct and life, 
and for that hard way of God in religion to put 
this easier and more appealing way of their own. 

There are other manifestations of this tend- 
ency in connection with religion. Religion, for 
instance, is a personal thing ; it speaks to you 
and to me with a Thou-art-the-man directness, 
and its voice is heard in Jesus Christ, saying, 
Take up thy cross, and come thou and follow me. 
We recognize the reasonableness and the noble- 
ness and the rightness of that command, and yet 
how we try to evade it, we men particularly. 
We say that religion is good, that Christianity is 
good, that we ought to support and encourage it 
and try to establish and maintain on the earth 
the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Therefore — what ? 



PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOl/s. 169 

We will ourselves become members of that 
kingdom ? We will ourselves try to obey and 
follow Jesus Christ ? No, no. But we will take 
a pew in Church, where the service is attractive 
and the music good, and we will go there, or we 
will at least make provision to have our families 
go. We will send our children to Sunday school, 
and when they are old enough and sufficiently 
instructed we shall be pleased to have them pre- 
sented for confirmation, and, as we call it, to 
become members of the Church. That is our 
cheaper, easier way of paying our tribute to 
Jesus Christ ; that is our vicarious way of honor- 
ing Jesus Christ ; that is our way of saying, Let 
Ishmael live before thee ! 

But, my friends, that is not what God re- 
quires, that is not the thing he demands ; not 
simply that we should try to make our children 
follow Jesus Christ — that of course, but some- 
thing else and more ; that we ourselves should 
follow Jesus Christ. It is not a vicarious alle- 
giance that he wants, but a personal allegi- 
ance, a personal obedience, a personal disciple- 
ship, and nothing that we offer in the way of 
tribute to him, no, not even the offering of Jesus 
Christ dying for our sins on the Cross, can take 
the place of thai, 



170 PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOD'S. 

Let us go on and look at the subject for a 
few moments, not in connection with religion 
only, but in some of its ot*her aspects. God is 
teaching and training human life to-day not by 
means of religion only, in the technical sense of 
the term, but by a process which, for want of a 
more convenient and better word, we may call 
a spiritual process. By this I mean that he is 
creating good desires and good resolves within 
ns, awakening aspirations toward something bet- 
ter and more than what at present we are ; 
giving us heavenly visions, putting ideals before 
us, which we feel to be so admirable, and which, 
if we only could, we would like so much to obey, 
and in accordance with which, if we only could, 
we would like so much to live. Surely we ought 
to know what that means. 

There is no man, I think, however low and 
clownish, who does not have at times some bright 
ideals in life, which more or less inspire him, 
and which if he only could he would be so glad 
to reach. And why is it — not that he does not 
reach them — but that so often he does not try ? 
Because he knows that he is weak and wayward 
and capricious and full of strong passions which 
he cannot control, and which so often lead him 
astray ? Yes, sometimes it is that, but some- 



PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOD'S. 171 

times there is another reason. Although he 
believes that his ideal is good and true, and that 
he ought to try to reach it, he also believes that 
situated and circumstanced as he is in this world 
it is not practical to try. It is good, but it will 
not go ; it is true, but it will not work ; it is 
right, but it cannot be done; and when despite 
all this you urge him still to try he does not 
heed you much, and like Abraham, perhaps he 
laughs an incredulous laugh and says in his 
heart, What an unpractical man you are ! 

Ah, my friends, it is the way of all of us, too 
much, I fear, too much. We have our lofty 
principles, our high and generous aims, — life 
would not be worth anything without them, — 
and we love to think about them and dream 
about them and dwell upon them, and to say to 
ourselves, how good, how admirable they are ! 
and that if we could, we would like so much to 
practice them. And perhaps in the shelter and 
seclusion of our own home we do practice them 
a little and then, then, oh, God forgive us, we go 
out among men and into the midst of affairs 
and we temporize and compromise and sacrifice. 
The high ideals are laid aside, principle becomes 
expediency, and a worldly policy our guide. 
And so again we substitute this easy, cheaper, 



172 PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOD*S. 

lower— or as we love to call it, this practical — 
way of our own for the harder way of God. 

Yes, it is the harder way ; and it is apt to 
become still harder as we get older, and as the 
years increase the ideals melt away ; and we 
often come to regard them as sentimental dreams ; 
and we laugh when we think that once, when we 
did not know what life is, when we did not know 
what the world is, what business is, what society 
is, we used to dream those dreams. But now we 
know, we are practical men, and we dream them 
no more. 

In one of the popular tales of Servia there is 
a story told of a young man who came to the 
goddess Fate and asked what was the right and 
noble way to live, for he wanted to live that way, 
he wanted an ideal in life. 

"I will tell thee," said the goddess ; u go and 
find and adopt some life that is weaker and 
poorer than thine, and live henceforth for it, 
and all thou makest give to it and call it not 
thine own ; then shalt thou be truly rich." 

And the young man did as the goddess said, 
and his wealth increased and he prospered, but he 
had his ideal through it all and he was a happy 
man. But at last one day he was tired of 
this, and like Abraham he laughed when he 



PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOD'S. 173 

thought of what the goddess had said and of how 
foolish he had been, and then he said to himself, 
" Why, all these treasures are mine, for I indeed 
have earned them. Fields and flocks and houses, 
they all belong to me ; henceforth I will keep 
them and use them for myself." He prospered 
and became successful and then he lost his ideal, 
and became a practical man, which so often 
means a hard, covetous, worldly-minded man. 

I wonder if that is not the story of some of us. 
We had high aims at first in life. Can we not 
remember them, and how we used to dream of 
the many good things we would do, the benevo- 
lent, the philanthropic and humanitarian work ; 
and if money came and we prospered we 
would use that money for others, or a good deal 
of it at least ? We would not simply enrich 
ourselves, but would try to enrich the world and 
make it better and gladder. We thought of the 
good we would do and we did it — for a while, 
and we were true to our aims. But after a while 
as we prospered and made money and became 
successful, our high ideals and aims seemed to 
go away, and we came to regard them as senti- 
mental and doctrinaire and foolish, and we laugh 
now as we think how foolish we used to be, 
and like the young man in the fable we have 



174 PREFERRING OUR OWN WAY TO GOD'S. 

learned to take a different view of our money, 
a closer, more worldly view, or, as we love 
to flatter our hearts by saying, a more practical 
view. And again for that hard way of God we 
substitute this cheap and more appealing way 
of our own, and the early generous impulse 
becomes a covetous passion. 

Yes, it is hard to keep the high ideals before 
us, and to walk in the way of God. It is the 
danger, subtle and strong, which confronts our 
spiritual life and which we have to fight. The 
tendency to substitute for the way of God th6 
easy way of our own ; that is our subject. It 
needs a word more to make it complete. 

We have seen God's way of training the world 
by a religious process ; we have seen his way of 
training the world by a spiritual process ; he also 
trains the world by a providential process, and 
neither is that way ours. We ask for strength 
and he sends us weakness ; we ask for health — 
for health to be able to do our work — and he 
sends us sickness ; we set our heart on some dear 
thing that we want to do, on some dear life that 
Ave want to keep, and he takes it away. In 
many a home this morning, as you and I sit here, 
a cloud is gathering, and a fear, a horrible 
fear, is coming, and a strong and earnest cry 



PREFERRING OUR OWJNT WAY TO GOD'S. 175 

is going ill) an( i saying, Oh, my God, do not take 
him away, let him live, let him live before thee 
and before me ! And God does not seem to hear 
or seem to heed that cry. Oh, no, my friends, 
it cannot be that, it cannot be that ; that indeed 
would be too hard to bear. I believe it to be 
this, on every hand I learn it, from every side 
I see it : we have one way, God has another way, 
and God's way is not ours. In a w 7 ay of his own 
he is training us and leading us on and on to 
something better and more than we could find 
for ourselves. Though he defeats our purposes 
he does not defeat us ; and all our hopes and 
dreams, and all the bright ideals toward which 
we now aspire will be at last in his way and not 
in ours fulfilled. 



THE TRUE VISION" AND THE 
FALSE SEER, 

I shall see him, but not now : I shall behold him, but not nigh: 
there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of 
Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the chil- 
dren of Slieth. — Numbers xxiv. 17. 

These words were spoken by the prophet 
Balaam. It will perhaps enable ns to under- 
stand them better if we try to recall briefly the 
circumstances of their utterance. With that 
faith in the power of incantation which is a 
characteristic of semi-barbarous people, Balak 
the king of Moab had asked the prophet to come 
and curse the children of Israel, that so, he says, 
" I may prevail against them and drive them out 
of the land." The prophet, however, after laying 
the matter before the Lord, had refused to obey 
the summons and had said that he would not go. 
Whereupon the king sent another deputation 
to him, saying, "Let nothing, I pray thee, hinder 
thee from coming, for I will promote thee to very 
great honor and do whatsoever thou dost desire. 
Come, therefore, I pray thee, and curse this 
people for me." But again the prophet refused, 

176 



THE TKUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEER. 177 

and said to the servants of the king, " If Balak 
would give me his house full of silver and gold I 
cannot go beyond the word of the Lord." And 
yet, notwithstanding this very noble sentiment, 
and despite his previous refusals, he did at 
last go. 

The story of the Book of Numbers does not 
tell us in so many words that he was induced to 
go by the tempting offer of the king's bribe, but 
in the New Testament references to the story 
it is indicated very clearly that that was the 
reason. At all events, after saying so stoutly 
that he ought not to go and that he would 
not go, he went, and was conducted by the king- 
to some commanding height where he could 
see all the people of Israel spread out in their 
prosperity on the plains below. And standing 
there, as the poet Keble has portrayed him, on 
the top of the rocks of Zophim, his wild hair 
streaming in the Eastern breeze, his tranced yet 
open gaze fixed on the desert haze, 

As one who deep in heaven some airy pageant sees, 

he utters the words of the text, and looks for- 
ward to the time, not in his day but later, when 
"a Star shall come out of Jacob and a Sceptre 
shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the 
corners of Moab and destroy all the children of 



178 THE TRUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEER. 

Sheth." The prophecy indeed was a true one, 
but as we have observed the man himself who 
uttered it was not a true man ; and this suggests 
the subject to which I ask your attention— the 
true vision and the false seer of it. 

The first thing I wish to say in considering the 
subject is this : that God gives to all men true 
and helpful visions, which, if they were obedient 
thereto, would have the effect in a measure to 
ennoble and transfigure their lives. I say he 
gives them to all — not only to us in Christendom 
but to those outside of Christendom, who live 
in what is called the heathen or pagan world. 
Balaam was a prophet in the pagan world ; he 
did not live in Israel, but beyond the borders of 
Israel, and yet notwithstanding the fact that he 
dwelt in the pagan world his prophecy was a 
good one and his vision right and true. Have 
there been no other prophets in the pagan world, 
are there none such there to-day, to whom God 
has given some vision of what is right, some 
vision of what is good, some vision of himself ? 
Are all the religious systems and practices and 
beliefs which at present we find there, the work 
of imposture and fraud, the embodiment only of 
evil, and wholly corrupt and false ? Some people 
seem to think so, and if what they think be true, 



THE TRUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEER. 179 

it is not only one of the saddest truths which the 
human mind can bring itself to contemplate, but 
also one of the most difficult to reconcile with OMr 
faith in the goodness of God. Think of it : that 
to all these men and women, the great majority of 
the human race, in all these numerous countries 
for all these thousands of years, God has sent no 
message, has spoken no quickening word, has 
given no helpful vision, has left them alone and 
forsaken them as though he cared not for them ; 
I cannot and do not believe it. 

I believe, on the contrary, that they are his 
children too ; that he has been mindful of them 
as he has been mindful of us ; that he has sent to 
them a vision as he has sent to us a vision ; that 
he has given to them a religion as he has given to 
us a religion ; and that while their forms of relig- 
ion are mingled with much that is foolish, false, 
idolatrous, wrong, there is also much that is 
true, and good, and noble, in them. To that 
extent they have been, to that extent they are, 
the word, the voice, the religion — yes, the relig- 
ion, of God, giving some true knowledge ami 
some true vision of him. Their knowledge oi' 
God is not so large as ours nor their vision of 
him so bright; theirs is the light of the lamp, 
theirs is the light, of the candle, ours is (lie light 



180 THE TRUE VISION AND THE EALSE SEER. 

of the sun — a richer, larger, fuller, more abun- 
dant light. 

Yet let us not be too quick to boast, let us 
not be too complacent. And this brings me to 
the next thing that I want to say in the treat- 
ment of the subject, that while the vision itself 
may be large and bright the seers of it may be 
false ; or that while the vision itself may be 
little and poor, the seers of it may be true. Do 
you want an illustration of this ? You have not 
far to go. 

I refer you to a correspondence that has re- 
cently been going on between two great nations, 
one called a Pagan and the other a Christian 
nation, one of them China and the other the 
United States. Read that correspondence, and 
except for the proper names employed, you 
would surely receive the impression that China 
was the Christian country and the United States 
the Pagan. In the one case, the case of China, 
you would see an appeal to conscience, the 
honor of plighted faith, the sanction of sacred 
treaty. In the other case, the case of the United 
States, you would see not only an utter disre- 
gard and setting aside of treaty, but the follow- 
ing of it up with a law so barbarous, so inhuman, 
that it should bring the blush to the cheek of 



THE TRUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEER. 181 

American manhood and make it tingle with 
sliame. 

Look at the two countries, China and the 
United States, and these two things you ob- 
serve : first, looking at China, a little knowledge 
of right, a little vision of God, and the seers of 
the vision true : second, looking at the United 
States, a larger knowledge of right, a larger 
vision of God, and the seers of the vision false. 

With what kind of consistency, with what 
kind of sincerity or hopefulness of good re- 
sult, can we go to the people of China or any 
other land, to give them in their twilight our 
more abundant light, our brighter and better 
vision, when we ourselves are false to the vision 
which we see ? 

But you may tell me that that is the way 
of political life, and what in political life we 
must always expect to find. Possibly so ; per- 
haps it is too much to expect the average politi- 
cian to be true to the heavenly vision. Then let 
us leave political life and look at some other life. 

Sometime ago astockbroking case was brought 
before the highest Court of England for settle* 
ment. A member of the Stock Exchange was 
put upon the witness stand and examined. In 
the course of his examination he declared that 



182 THE TRUE VISION AXD THE FALSE SEER. 

it was considered to be quite a legitimate prin- 
ciple in business for a person who holds a 
worthless stock and knows it to be worthless, to 
sell it out to someone else, if he can, who does 
not know it be worthless. The Lord Chief Jus- 
tice of England, in commenting on the testi- 
mony, made this terse remark, that if what the 
witness said was true, then the Stock Exchange 
of England had apparently failed to master the 
simplest elementary principles of common hon- 
esty. But it may not have been true, — I hope it 
was not, — and what the witness said may not have 
fairly reflected the ordinary methods of proceed- 
ing in practical business affairs. I am not an 
expert in such matters, and you know better 
than I. But what I do say is this, that not 
only in your world, but in mine, and in the world 
of all of us to-day, there are apt to be two morali- 
ties, two standards of moral obedience, one for 
use in private, the other for use in public ; one 
for use at home, the other for use on the street ; 
one for use in the personal or in the domestic 
life, the other for use in the professional or in 
the business life. What I do say is this, that 
the high ideal principle in which at heart we 
believe is apt to be compromised a little and 
brought down to what we call practical expe- 



THE TRUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEER. 1S3 

diency. For you, for me, for all of us, it is 
hard to be true to our visions, our bright ideal 
visions, and, which although we practice and 
embody them so little, we value and esteem 
so much. We all have those visions, God sends 
them at times to all of us, none of us are with- 
out them, and how fair they are ; how good, how 
beautiful do they appear ! 

Standing like the prophet Balaam upon some 
mountain-top, a glorious outlook comes, a heav- 
enly vision dawns, a sceptre of power appears 
nobler and better than the power which at 
present we try to exert. Or in our vast horizon 
field some star of dominion rises — a dominion 
larger and more and brighter than silver and gold, 
a moral and spiritual dominion, a moral and 
spiritual ambition ; and as we look, we dream of 
all the good things which we hope some day to 
do — yes, some day, but not to-day ; we shall do 
them, but not now ; we shall behold them, but not 
nigh. For alas, as we stand on our mountain- 
top dreaming of the good things which we hope 
to do, the world is standing with us as Balak 
stood with Balaam, or the voices and the bribes 
of the world are sounding in our heart— ita 
promises of very great honor, its offers of silver 
and gold. And the good things of which we 



184 THE TRUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEEK. 

dream and which we hope to do, we shall do 
them, but not now ; we shall behold them, but 
not nigh ; and the glorious outlook vanishes and 
the heavenly vision fades, and coming down 
from our mountain-top and mingling with the 
world, the dreams of the good things pass and 
go and the dreams of avarice stay. 

Ah, men and women, you who are hoping 
to do some good things in the future, now 
is the time to do them, now while you have 
the liberty, now while you have the wish, 
now while you see and know what the vision is ; 
now is the time to be true to it and the time to 
obey the vision ! For the vision when it comes 
again, if it does come, may not be so bright, 
and the wish to obey may not be so strong. 
A good impulse resisted is always in a measure 
weakened, and the voice with which it speaks, 
unheeded becomes unheard, and like an echo 
fainter and fainter grows, till in the distance 
it dies away. How often has it happened that 
a man in his earlier life, before his moral vision 
became blurred and broken, has thought of some 
noble work which he would like so much to 
perform, of some beneficent cause which he 
would like so much to help, to which indeed he 
would like to give his influence, his time, his 



THE TRUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEER. J 85 

money, himself. And he says to himself, I will 
give it, or he says to himself, I will do it, but 
not now — some day in the future I will do it, 
and hereafter I will give it. And he is always 
never quite ready, and the hereafter is always 
hereafter, and the vision goes and the impulse 
goes, and the man goes, and the money — 
which when he had it was the promise and the 
potency of so many useful beneficences — goes, 
and in spite of all his careful testamentary 
planning and codiciling, he can never be quite 
sure how and where it goes. 

Whatever the many good things that may be 
said of such a person when he is gone, the com- 
prehensive epitaph that best describes his life 
and what it was on earth, seems to me to be 
this : A true vision, and a disobedient seer of it. 

So it was with Balaam ; so it has been with 
many another man. 

But let us go to the story for another lesson. 
First, when the message came from (he king he 
would not and did not go ; and the second time 
when the message came, he would not and did 
not go. But it is very evident that in the mean- 
while he has been thinking about it a good deal, 
and the protest with which hedeclines the second 
time is altogether too vigorous, is altogether too 



186 THE TRUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEER. 

strong. " If Balak would give me Ms house full 
of silver and gold I cannot and would not go." 
The prophet protests too much, the vehemence 
of his protest indicates a weakening in his moral 
purpose. It is the language of one who is begin- 
ning to be dazzled by, and to yield to tempta- 
tion. And we would know r now, even if we did 
not have the rest of the story to tell lis, that 
the bargain in his soul has been already closed, 
that Balak' s gold has bought him, and that he 
would go — as he did. 

Does it not have a parallel in human life to- 
day ? A man has a vision of right, the noblest 
right and the best. The spirit of God has touched 
and quickened and illumined his heart, and he 
takes his stand on principle, on high and honor- 
able principle, and whatever may be the conse- 
quence, whatever may be the loss, he will main- 
tain that stand. Then some day, some crucial 
day, some critical day in his life the great temp- 
tation comes to him, as it comes to every man, 
and like Balak to Balaam it seems to say, "I 
will promote thee to very great honor, I will 
give thee thy heart's desire, if thou wilt do this 
thing." " No, I will not listen to it, I will not 
listen," he says ; and yet he does listen, just- 
listen — that is all — but still he is very firm— at 



THE TRUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEER. 187 

least he imagines he is, and he says in his firm- 
ness, "No, I cannot possibly do it ; if Balak or 
anyone else would give me his house full of 
silver and gold I could not think of doing it for 
a moment. Could I % " He is weakening a little. 
" There can be no harm, however, in just thinking 
about it ; just thinking about it, and of all the 
good things that would come to me, if I were 
willing to do it, as of course I am not willing" ; 
and he goes on just thinking about it. He is 
beginning to yield a little. And the rest of his 
story, is it not told in the Book of Numbers and 
in that 24th chapter thereof, from which I have 
taken my text ? And the lesson of the story is 
this, when we see what is good, what is right, let 
us do it at once ; when we see clearly what is 
wrong, what is bad, let us not think about it. 

And one lesson more. We have our bright 
ideal visions, not only of life in this world but 
of life in some other world — the world where 
there is no strife, no sin, no sorrow, no death. 
We have these bright and beautiful visions, and 
we enjoy them. We love to hear them preached 
about, and we love to sing about them— of the 
"Green Hill faraway," "the Beautiful Homo 
beyond," of the "Land of pure delight where 
saints immortal reign," of the "Sweel and 



188 THE TRUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEEK. 

blessed Country, the home of God's elect, the 
Sweet and blessed Country, that eager hearts 
expect." 

Yes, we have these dreams, these visions, and 
we enjoy them ; and as they come and float 
before and touch and quicken our hearts and 
stir and move our souls, and we think of that 
heavenly world and wonder what it will be, like 
Balaam we say or sigh, " Let me die the death 
of the righteous, let my last end be like his. 55 

Ah, if we would die the death of the righteous 
we must live the life of the righteous. We go 
into another as we go through this, and the office 
of religion is not simply to teach us how to enjoy 
the heavenly vision, but to teach us how to be 
obedient and true to the heavenly vision. Then 
indeed will the joy be a joy that does not go ; 
then indeed will the light be a light that does not 
fade. Sundays, Mondays, all the days it will 
sing and shine, becoming brighter and brighter 
through all the days on earth, till the vision of 
hope and faith merges and blends at last into 
the fuller vision of sight. 

The whole subject, may I say in conclusion, it 
seems to 'me has special application to young 
men. The visions of early life as a rule are high 
and bright and pure. Every young person who is 



THE TRUE VISION AND THE FALSE SEER. 189 

worth anything, or who will ever amount to 
anything, has such visions. He may not care to 
talk about them to his elders or his companions, 
but nevertheless, if he is worth anything, he has 
them, and in his soul he dreams them. Well, 
my friends, go on dreaming those dreams. 
Whatever your line in life may be, political life, 
business life, social life, go on dreaming those 
dreams. Let not the world rob you of them, for 
those dreams of the soul are the visions of God, 
and the man who has them is clothed with the 
power of God, is inspired by the spirit of God, 
becomes more and more the incarnation of God, 
and is to his generation, the age in which he 
lives, the revelation of God. 



SIN, AND ITS DELIVERER. 

And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not j 
I am the first and the last : 1 am he that liveth and was dead; and 
have the keys of hell. — Revelation i. 17, 18. 

The Book of Revelation is hard and to a great 
extent unintelligible reading. Its sublime utter- 
ances shine out upon the pages of the Bible like 
the stars in the midnight sky. There the stars 
are, as everyone can see, and doubtless they are 
there for a wise and good purpose, but what that 
purpose is we have not yet managed fully to 
ascertain. There are some things about the 
stars, however, not many, but a few, which we do 
understand, and there are some things about the 
Book of Revelation which seem to be tolerably 
clear. It is a book which describes, like Dante's 
Inferno, with weird speech and eccentric simile, 
the sufferings caused by sin, its moral and 
spiritual deaths, its blighting plagues and judg- 
ments. And these are so appalling even to con- 
template, that, to give the writer courage to 
enter upon the task of narration, he is made to 
see in vision the form and to hear the voice of 

190 



SIN, AND ITS DELIVERER. 191 

One who has conquered all things, even death 
and the grave, who can and does deliver, from 
the prison-house of sin and has the keys of hell. 
Let me ask you to-day to think with me a little 
while about this pervading purpose of the 
Apocalypse of St. John, which, when trans- 
lated into our common speech, is to make us see 
what sin is and how in Jesus Christ we are 
delivered from it. 

First, the effect of sin. There is, I think, no 
greater ethical distinction between the present 
and the past than the different estimates placed 
in the two periods of time upon the significance 
of sin. To-day we are a little disposed to make 
light of it, to condone it, to find in various ways 
palliation for it, to regard it not so much as 
a moral evil for which the offender is himself 
responsible, but rather as a misfortune of which 
he is the victim, perhaps the innocent and help- 
less victim. We regard him as the product of 
heredity, or the creature of environment, or the 
embodiment simply of some wild, eccentric 
tendency in our social life, which, in the gradual 
development of our social life from chaos into 
cosmos, has not yet been orbed into order, has 
not found as vol its true and proper place. And 
so for various reasons wo have come to bave in 



192 SIN, AND ITS DELIVERER. 

our modern life not that vivid sense of sin, its 
hideousness, its shamefulness, its misery, its 
guiltiness, which the people of other and earlier 
ages had, and which, as we read their literature 
and study their story, we find to be one of the 
prominent and characteristic features of it. 

Look at the classical writings of the old 
Greeks, for example. See how through them 
all this tragic thread of suffering for moral evil 
runs. The doom of the man who sins, how sure 
it is, how inexorable ! even when, as in the case 
of anCEdipus, he does not know that he has com- 
mitted a sin, or as in the case of an Orestes, 
whom the avenging furies pursue to madness, 
despite the mitigating circumstances of the sin. 
Consciously or unconsciously the sin has been 
committed, the moral wrong been done, and 
the penalty must be paid, satisfaction given, and 
expiation had. This is the thought that runs 
through all the poetry of the Greeks, which has 
made it so sublime, and given such greatness to 
it ; not the delicacy of its artistic feeling 
merely, not the fineness of its aesthetic percep- 
tion merely, not simply the loftiness and the ele- 
gance of its intellectual tone, but the dark 
shadow of sin that is on it, the sense of sin that 
pervades it, the cry of the human soul in its 



SIN, AND ITS DELIVERER. 193 

wrestling with sin, in its tragic endeavor to 
escape the expiation which cannot be escaped, 
and which the commission of sin imposes and 
requires. 

As with the noblest literature of the old pagan 
past, so has it been with the noblest poetry of 
the Christian past. I have said that the 
Apocalypse of St. John is like the Inferno of 
Dante. And what is the Inferno of Dante, that 
greatest of epic poems ? What has made it so 
great ? Why has it touched so profoundly and 
had such a powerful hold on the heart and life of 
the world ? The genius of Dante ; yes, but some- 
thing more ; the genius of Dante trying to tell in 
the weird and fantastic language of the theology 
of the day the story of man as a sinner, showing 
how awful is sin, what depths of hell are in it, 
how sure and great is the suffering to which its 
commission leads. And hence it was that the 
voice of the old Florentine singer awakened 
all Europe, aroused it from its lethargy, and 
appealed so strongly to it. 

And as with the poem of Dante, so with that 
other great Christian poem which is only second 
to Dante — the poem of Milton, which is not 
simply the story of sin in human life, but the 
story of sin in the universe : not simply the epic 






194 SIN, AND ITS DELIVERER. 

of man as a sinner, but of larger compass, 
of wider scope — the epic of sin itself. This is 
its greatness, its sublimity, not its dignified 
movements and stately measures merely, its 
similes, its allegories, its fine poetic creations, 
but the deep, awful, tragic sense of sin which is 
in the poet's soul, and which he has imparted to 
his song. 

So, if time permitted and this were not a 
sermon which I am trying to preach, with a 
practical purpose in view, many other instances 
might be cited, from the literature of the past — 
from the " Ethics," of a Seneca, and the writings 
of an Aurelius, and the " Faust" of a Goethe, 
and the "Macbeth" of a Shakspere, and even 
so recent a past as the " Manfred" of a Byron — 
all of them going to show how different is the 
sense of sin in our modern life and literature, 
and how much less is the significance which we 
attribute to it. It does not seem to be such a 
large and active factor in our modern thought, 
does not seem to enter so strongly into the con- 
sciousness of the modern world, and even if we 
had in our modern society the genius of the old 
Greek tragedian, or of the Florentine singer, we 
would not have and could not have their poems 
and their songs. Some other theme would 



SIN, AND ITS DELIVERER. 195 

inspire them, some other topic touch and awaken 
the genius in them, for the sense of sin in the 
modern world would not be sufficiently strong 
and active to evoke it. And yet in that book, to 
which the modern world, despite its enlighten- 
ment, still looks for its highest instruction in 
all matters affecting its spiritual destiny ; with 
what severest language, graphic, startling terms 
of speech is human sin described ! And the 
burden of all its literature, its epic, its psal- 
mody, its history, the burden of its story is 
this, that sin is death, is hell, and that 
righteousness only is life. That is the refrain 
that we hear throughout the New Testament 
story also, not only in the Apocalypse of St. 
John, and in the Epistles of St. Paul, but in the 
gracious utterances of Jesus Christ himself, 
who, while speaking to men with a love that had 
never been witnessed in the history of the world 
before and has never been since, has neverthe- 
less depicted as no one else has done the misery 
and the awfulness of sin. 

And so important did it seem to Jesus Christ 
that men should be delivered from the power of 
sin, that almost everything else was of little 
consequence in comparison with i(. It is 
not necessary, he seemed to say to men, that 



196 SIN, AISTD ITS DELIVERER. 

you should live a few years more or less, 
that you should have fine houses and com- 
fortable clothes, that you should have more 
worldly goods and possessions. These things 
are important and valuable ; get them if you 
can ; but they are not necessary. There is 
only one necessity — seek first the kingdom of 
God. It is better to enter into the kingdom 
of God, halt, maimed, blind, than having all 
your bodily members — two hands, two feet, two 
eyes — to be cast into hell fire. What is a man 
profited if he gain the whole world and then lose 
himself, his soul, his life ? How we like to skip 
these words in the gospel story as we read it ; 
and yet the words are there, coming from the 
lips of the gentle and gracious Christ, who went 
from place to place, from synagogue to seashore, 
from desert plain to mountain-top, saying to the 
wondering crowds, that followed him every- 
where, "Go and sin no more. Go and sin no 
more." And when he saw that they did not 
heed his words, but went rushing madly on to 
their own destruction and doom, he felt in his 
sympathetic soul such a sense of the misery of 
their sin that his whole frame shook with agony 
till the blood burst out of the pores. 

Ah, my friends, despite the fact that the mod- 



SIX, AND ITS DELIVERER. 197 

ern world is disposed to make light of sin, and 
condone it, and to say foolish things about it, that 
teaching of Jesus Christ is true and experience 
has proved it true ; not merely that sin will here- 
after issue in a moral state and condition which 
Jesus Christ and the Bible describe as hell — that 
of course is something which we cannot now ex- 
perience — but that sin itself here and now is hell, 
and that the man who sins is in hell. He may 
not know it, and he may enjoy it. But, to use 
the simile of another, is corruption any the 
less corruption because the worm loves it ? Is 
hell any the less hell because Ave take pleasure 
in it % But the pleasure does not last; and sooner 
or later we find that sin indeed is a scourge, 
an anguish, a pain, a remorse, a scorpion sting, a 
serpent coil, a scourging fire, and that Jesus 
Christ has not too strongly described it. Yes, we 
find it — for I am not speaking of the sins of the 
Jews in the time of Jesus Christ, nor am I speak- 
ing of the sins of the men down at the Rescue 
Mission, but of your sins and mine, — ah, we have 
them, — which sooner or laterforce us to cry with 
the sinner of long ago, " Oh, wretched man thai 
I am, who shall deliver me from this body of sin 
and hell? " Who? Jesus Christ: the hell of 
sin has a door, and Christ holds the key. 



198 SIN, AND ITS DELIVERER. 

This brings me to the purpose which I have 
had in view from the outset. I have said that the 
Apocalypse of St. John is like the "Inferno " of 
Dante. There is yet another point of compari- 
son. Every part of the "Divine Comedy," as 
some of you perhaps remember, ends with the 
word " stars " ; for these, as one of his critics has 
said, are the blessed abodes of peace to which the 
heart of the poet is forever aspiring, and which 
send their beams of hope down to the darkest 
dungeons which he is describing, and give the 
promise of deliverance to those imprisoned 
there. So does St. John in his still more won- 
derful poem, in setting forth so strongly the suf- 
ferings caused by sin, give us the vision of one 
who has the keys of hell, who can unlock the door 
here, there, anywhere, in this world or the next, 
and set the prisoners free. Surely just that is 
what Jesus Christ has done in the past. Let 
men call him what they please — man, or God, or 
both— he has opened the prison door and set the 
prisoners free. 

How has he done it? Why, in the same 
way precisely — that you do it, or can do it. 
Someone has . done you a wrong, cherishes in 
his heart a feeling of hatred against you. How 
can you overcome that feeling and get it out of 



Slfr, AND ITS DELIVERER. 199 

his heart ? Punish, crush, scourge, denounce, 
hate him in return, and while by the manifesta- 
tion of your superior strength you may prevent 
him from doing any further injury to you, yet in 
his heart he will hate you more and more, and 
be glad of a chance to hurt you. But go and to 
the uttermost, with nothing reserved, forgive 
him, make him through your love for him love 
you in return, and the hatred — there is none ; 
we look for it, and it is gone, it has vanished 
like smoke, and the man who has sinned against 
you sins against you no more. 

Oh, you say, that is too hard, you cannot do it. 
No, perhaps not, but Jesus Christ can and does, 
and makes men feel that the God whom he 
reveals, no matter how great the sin, how dark. 
how awful, even though it be the piercing and 
the wounding and the killing of the Son of Man 
himself — that the God whom he reveals is a 
God who forgives to the uttermost, and loves, 
and loves, and forever loves. That is the 
secret of Jesus Christ, by which he has as 
with a key unlocked the doors of the prison 
house and set the prisoners free. He has sim- 
ply brought to bear upon the hearts of men 
in the past — perhaps you and I do not know 
much about it, perhaps we have not felt i! this 



200 SIN", AND ITS DELIVERER. 

great and strong power, this almighty power ; 
yes, almighty power of love. And touched and 
moved and quickened by it, by the power of one 
who loves them and whom they love in return, 
they have risen above and conquered their sins, 
and the prisoners have been set free. 

What Jesus Christ has done in the past he can 
do to-day. Are we under the dominion — not per- 
haps of gross, licentious sins which the world 
denounces, and which for fear of the denouncing 
we avoid, but are we under the dominion of a 
pride, an envy, a jealousy, some hurtful passion, 
some worldly and self-seeking ambition, from 
which we cannot escape ? Are there frailties and 
infirmities and impurities in our life, our thought, 
our speech, our conduct, our character which we 
have been trying for years, but trying in vain, 
to conquer \ Is there a vision of right, of duty, of 
a higher and better life, of a kingdom of heaven 
before us. which we are not able to enter, but 
from which, defeated, foiled, baffled, we are for- 
ever falling back into a life so low, so sordid, 
so unsatisfactory that it makes us feel at times 
as though it were hell itself? It is hell; and 
as long as we are under the dominion of sin we 
are in hell. 

But let us go and learn upon the authority of 



SIN", AND ITS DELIVERER. 2ul 

Jesus Christ — what better authority can we 
have? — that the great and mighty power which 
is working so mysteriously in the universe about 
us, and " still weaving its eternal secret visible 
and invisible around our lives," is not the power 
of law, accident, fate, caprice, but the power of 
an infinite love. And then the lire of love will 
extinguish the fire of hell and the heart will be 
touched and purified with a new and nobler 
passion, and the prison doors will be opened and 
we, the prisoners, will be free. 

Is there someone here this morning, whose 
conscience smarts with the sense of some great 
sin he has done, some great wrong committed, 
the memory of which burns at times like a fire, 
and which makes him feel that he is unworthy 
to-day to come and kneel at this chancel rail i 
Oh, my friend, remember that it is the God of 
Jesus Christ to Avhom you come ; the God of him 
who, when men spat in his face and mocked him 
and pierced his side and broke his heart, said with 
inextinguishable love, "Father, forgive them"; 
and he did forgive, and he does forgive, and he 
is forgiving you. Let the old memory trouble 
you no longer. Come with bended form and 
bowed knee and heart to receive the assurance 
of his love — then go and sin no more. 



202 BIN, AND ITS DELIVERER. 

What Jesus Christ has done in the past and 

what h to-day, I for one believe he will 

hereafter do. Wherever men sin. there is hell, 
whether it be in Xew York City or in some other 
city : whether it be in this world or in some o: 
world. Wherever men cease from sin. in this 
world or some other world, they are delivei 
from hell. And Jesus Christ has revealed the 
vei which can make men cease from sin. and 
will. I believe, at last make all men cease from 
sin. He holds the keys of hell here, the 
everywhere; and I for a moment do not doubt 
that he will unlock the doors of ail hells and 
set the prisoners free. 

You may remind me that Jesus Christ has 
said that it is an everlasting fire, a fire that is 
not quenched. Yes. so it is. Does it follow 
that because the fire burns forever somebody is 
in it forever \ As long as the creatures of G 
are free — which will be. I presume, forever — they 
will be free to sin. and with this everlasting 
possibility of sin in the universe, there will be 
an everlasting fire in it. ready to break out and 
burn in the hearts of those who choose to sin. 
But the perfect love of God can make men cease 
from sin. and will. I believe, finally make all men 
cease from sin. and choose not to sin. to sin no 



SIN, AND ITS DELIVERER. 203 

more, and the everlasting prison house will 
have no prisoners in it. Love, love at last will 
conquer all and conquer everywhere. 

I began my sermon by instituting a compar- 
ison between the Apocalypse and the u Divine 
Comedy": let me so close it. It was a Virgil, 
you remember, the man of letters, the scholar, 
who conducted a Dante through the mis- 
eries of the "Inferno" and the " Purgato- 
rio " and enabled him to look upon them. 
But the man of letters can go no farther. It 
was a Beatrice, the sjaubol of pure and per- 
fect love, who led him through the gates 
and among the circles of Paradise. Learning, 
knowledge, high scholarship, culture, are good, 
but they have not the adequate power to 
redeem from sin — they simply show us sin. 
Love alone can redeem from sin. Jesus Christ 
is love, his gospel stands for love ; a love that will 
at last burst the bars of every prison house in the 
universe and set the prisoners free. He holds 
in his right hand the keys of hell, and he will 
unlock the door. 



CONSCIENCE. 

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him, 
until the breaking of the day.— Genesis xxxii. 24. 

These words belong to a very eventful incident 
in the career of Jacob ; let us see what it was. 
Twenty years before the date of it he had sinned 
against and defrauded his brother Esau of his 
birthright ; and now, after the lapse of so long a 
time, he is returning rich and prosperous to his 
native land with the expectation of meeting that 
defrauded brother. And while in his solitude 
upon the margin of the brook Jabbok — for he 
had sent all his companions on — he is meditat- 
ing with some apprehension upon the possible 
results of that interview, he seems to become 
aware, as the twilight gathers and deepens and 
the darkness settles upon him, of the presence 
of some antagonist both mysterious and power- 
ful, whose grappling form he can feel but is not 
able to see, and whose name he does not know. 
It is a long and desperate encounter, lasting 
throughout the night. Finally, however, his an- 
tagonist prevails against him, and by throwing 

204 



CONSCIENCE. 205 

his body out of joint gets the victory over him, 
not, however, with the usual result of making 
him weaker by the defeat, but greater and 
more — by conquering he blesses him and by 
subduing him makes him strong. Then when 
the struggle is over and the night is gone and 
the day breaks, Jacob perceives that the per- 
son who has been wrestling with him is not 
human, but divine ; and he calls the place 
Peniel, "for I have seen God face to face, and 
my life is preserved." 

It is a curious story and perhaps in part 
legendary, but no matter. It is both human 
and true, and I want to show you this morning 
how true and human it is. 

"Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a 
man with him." You remember the incident 
related of one of the celebrated court preachers 
of France in the last century, that when on one 
occasion he was expounding in the royal pres- 
ence the seventh chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to 
the Romans, in which the writer so graphically 
describes his conflict with himself, as though it 
were a conflict between two men within him, 
" The good that I would I do not, and the evil 
that T would not, that I do," he was suddenly 
interrupted in the midst of his discourse by 



206 CONSCIENCE. 

tlie king exclaiming, " I know those two men — 
I know them." 

Yes, and so we do, intimately. How often 
does it seem as though our human life were not 
one, but two ; as though in addition to the per- 
sonality in us which is visible and which through 
speech and conduct shows itself to the world, 
there were some other second personality in us 
which is invisible, and which the world does not 
see, cannot see, which we ourselves cannot see, 
which nevertheless we feel, and feel at times so 
vividly as wrestling with us, fighting against us, 
trying so hard to defeat and get the victory over 
us ? What is it ? Conscience ? The moral sense ? 
Yes, but what is conscience ? It is ourselves 
fighting with, struggling against, pleading with 
ourselves — ourselves trying to vanquish and 
overcome ourselves, as though, I say, we were 
two selves, or there were two selves within us, 
contending with one another, listening to one 
another, carrying on a dialogue and talking to 
one another. One self speaks to the other self, 
and the other self replies. One self says, "I 
want to," and the other self says, "I must 
not." One self says, "I will," and the other self 
says, "I cannot"; and so the debate goes on and 
the controversy and the conflict as between two 



CONSCIENCE. 207 

selves within us. Conscience? Yes, it is con- 
science, but again I ask, what is conscience? 
Books almost innumerable have been written 
by men to tell us what conscience is. The 
scientist has tried to dissect it, and the moralist 
to explain it, and the philosopher to define it, 
and the poet and the dramatist with suitable 
speech and action, have tried so hard to portray 
it upon the theatre boards and to make it live 
and move and cry, and embody itself before us. 
In what ponderous volumes of Scotch and Ger- 
man metaphysic and mediaeval casuistry and 
Greek and Roman tragedy have the attempts 
been made to describe it and to show us in what 
it consists ! And yet nowhere, it seems to me, 
do we find a better description of it, or a descrip- 
tion half so good, as in that old story of Jacob 
which the book of Genesis gives, and which St. 
Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, describing 
his conflict with himself, seems to have had 
in mind. 

After a score of years — it is a long time in a 
man's career — Jacob is returning to the scene 
of his old forgotten sin, and it all comes back 
and revives, and seems to rise out of its grave 
again, and Jacob is alone with his sin. Every- 
thing else has left him, faded, vanished, gone 



208 CONSCIENCE. 

not merely his friends and companions and 
the consciousness of them, but the conscious- 
ness of his greatness, the consciousness of his 
wealth, the consciousness of the high and 
eminent degree of prosperity to which he had 
attained ; it has all faded and gone and Jacob 
is alone with his sin. And there wrestles with 
him throughout the night — not conscience does 
he call it ; it seems like something alive, like 
something personal, like the wrestling with him 
of a man, and he seems to hear it speak to him 
as with a personal voice, and he seems to feel 
it touch him, and lay its hand upon him and 
press its body against him as with personal 
pressure and touch. And then when the 
struggle is over and the night has gone and 
the day breaks, he is made to see and know 
that it was something personal ; that it was in 
truth the personal God who had been wrestling 
with him. And that is conscience ; that is what 
conscience is, and why so often it seems at times 
like some other part of ourself. It is some other 
part of ourself — it is the God part of ourself, it 
is God wrestling with us. That is the name for 
it, and nowhere else in all literature, I think, in 
Byron or Shakspere or Dante, as in that old 
story of Jacob, is it so clearly, so vividly 



CONSCIENCE. 209 

shown — like a picture — to be the wrestling with 
us of God. 

And that wrestling of God with men still goes 
on in the world. There are times indeed when 
they do not seem to feel it very much, as Jacob 
did not — long times, covering perhaps a period 
of many years. Like Jacob they are busy with 
worldly affairs and interests and ambitions 
and aspirations, with trying to become rich and 
prosperous and to get on in the world ; and that 
wrestling with them of God, except for an occa- 
sional twinge or wrench, they do not feel it 
much. 

But there are other times, and they are sure 
to come, when they do feel it, when through 
the suggestive happening of some unexpected 
incident, the suggestive association of some old 
place or scene — a sight, a sound, a memory, 
an anniversary, or when through the working 
in them of some deep, mysterious force, which 
they are not able to explain, there is borne 
in upon their souls the consciousness of sin or 
of sinfulness — the overwhelming consciousness 
of it, and it seems so absorbingly real. They 
had not thought much about it before, they had 
not minded it much, and moving from day to 
day among their fellow-men and comparing 



210 CONSCIENCE. 

themselves with them, it had seemed to be 
enough that they were no worse than they. But 
now they are not conscious of their fellow- 
men — they are conscious of sin, and that con- 
sciousness of sin or of sinfulness, their own per- 
sonal sinfulness, as in the case of Jacob, has the 
effect to efface the consciousness of everything 
else. Everything else disappears and seems to 
drop out of sight and they are alone with sin, 
their sin : and God seems to come and grapple 
and wrestle with them, and will not let them go. 
Ah. yes. that old story of Jacob in the book of 
Genesis, how true it is. how human, how old and 
yet how new ! God still wrestles with man. I 
should not be surprised if he were wrestling with 
some of you. And it seems like a part of your- 
self, doesn't it \ struggling with Yourself. And 
it is a part of yourself— it is the God part of your- 
self, pleading with, struggling with, trying to 
get the victory over the other part of yourself. 
And some day I think you will see it, that that 
old story of Jacob in the book of Genesis is your 
story too ; that that wrestling with you of con- 
science, that wrestling with you of duty, in the 
voice which says. I ought to, the voice that says. 
It is right, though perhaps in this bewildering 
night time when things are so confused you do 



CONSCIENCE. 211 

not see it clearly, you will hereafter see, when 
the night has gone and the day breaks, has been 
the wrestling with you of God. 

But let me go on to the concluding part of the 
story and call your attention to that other mys- 
terious way, through circumstance as well as 
through conscience, or through circumstance 
re-enforcing conscience, in which God wrestles 
with us and tries to bring us at last into submis- 
sion to him. 

" Jacob was left alone and there wrestled a 
man with him.' 5 So at the time it seemed. 
"And when he perceived that he prevailed not 
against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh, 
and Jacob's thigh was out of joint." Is not that 
too a modern as well as an ancient story I For 
no matter how men may interpret the fact, the 
fact itself is obvious enough, is at times sad and 
painful enough, that some great mysterious force 
is working in, upon, and through our human 
life, dissolving its ties and relationships and 
severing and breaking its dearest bonds and its 
most sacred unions, and throwing it out of joint. 
There are hospitals in our cities and scattered 
over the land, which a generous humanity lias 
provided for broken and wounded bodi< 
bodies which have been broken by dise 



212 CONSCIENCE. 

or which accident has thrown out of joint. But 
ah, where are the hospitals that can hold and 
shelter the hearts that have been broken and 
wounded and crippled and thrown out of 
joint ! All over the city, all over the land, 
all over the earth we find them ; hearts, 
homes, lives which in some way, by a living 
trouble, by a dead trouble, by a loss, by a 
disappointment, by a failure, by a want, by a 
withholding pressure, by a disturbing touch, 
have been wrenched away from what was best, 
brightest, dearest in life, and crippled and 
thrown out of joint. 

The fact, I say, is obvious enough, so obvious, so 
commonplace that it calls for no comment, but it 
cannot be ignored. And what, my friends, is the 
explanation and the meaning of it all ? Is there no 
explanation at all? Must we just go on stolidly, 
stoically, and at times a little bit cynically, doing 
the best we know and getting the best we can, 
and not doing or getting much except a little 
more embittered, and a little more hardened, 
as the journey of life proceeds ? Or may it not 
mean — looking at it in the light of Jesus 
Christ, does it not mean — this: that all life 
on earth, no matter how circumstanced and 
related, is out of joint until it is joined to the 



CONSCIENCE. 213 

living God, and that through these many dis- 
placements, dislodgments, discomfitures, he is 
trying to bring it, to bind it more closely to 
himself, to develop more and more what is 
godlike in it ? 

And whatever loss does that, no matter how 
sharp and painful and irreparable it may appear 
at the time, will prove in the end, when the 
struggle is over and the night is gone and the 
day breaks, to have been our best, greatest, and 
most enduring gain. 

Yes, the story of Jacob is our story too, and 
God through conscience and through circum- 
stance wrestles with human life and will not let 
it go — not to hurt and weaken and make it less, 
but to make it greater and more — by conquering 
it to bless it, by subduing it to make it strong. 
At last the conflict of Jacob was over, as our 
conflict will be over. He said " Let me go, for 
the day breaketh." Was it Jacob or was it God 
who said it? It was the God in him who said 
it ; the God part of himself, wrestling with and 
conquering the other part of himself, the same 
God who works and wrestles now in us ; the same 
divine, imperishable God life, which will some 
day say to this earthly house and tabernacle, 
"My work in you is done, my wrestling with 



214 CONSCIENCE. 

you is over, let me go, let me go, for the day 
breaketh — the day of cloudless beauty, the day 
where there is no night, the day in which 
there is no conflict, and no loss ; its morning 
light has come at last — let me go, for the day 
breaketh." 



GOING ON JOURNEYS TO FIND CHRIST. 

In these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antiocli — 
Acts xi. 27. 

Histoky repeats itself, and the history of the 
Christian Church is no exception to the rule. I 
want to try to show you this morning that the 
way in which at the outset it was made to grow, 
the path in which it moved, is the path in which 
it has always moved, in which it is moving now ; 
that in the words of the text we have that path 
described, "from Jerusalem unto Antiocli." 

First let me try to show you what I mean by 
the terms, or what, as I understand it, is the 
significance of the phrase. Jerusalem was the 
place where the religion of Jesus Christ began, 
and its earliest disciples were Jews, nor did they 
suppose that in accepting it they became for 
a moment anything else than Jews. They 
accepted it because they w T ere Jews, because 
it was the fulfillment of their Jewish hopes and 
beliefs. And therefore wo find thai a Cum* they 
had accepted it, they still retained for a con- 
siderable time their Jewish rites, symbols, sacri- 



216 GOIXG OX JOURNEYS TO FIXD CHEIST. 

fices, ceremonies, such as worshiping in the 
synagogue, the observance of the seventh day, 
the practice of circumcision ; and as Dr. Mathe- 
son observes in his monograph on St. Paul, they 
had no more thought of separating themselves 
from that old Jewish Church than John Wesley 
had of separating himself from the Church of 
England. And singularly enough, he adds, the 
name by which they were called was just that 
name of "Methodists," or as it is translated in 
the Book of the Acts t; Men of the Way," which 
means the same thing. They were, in other 
words, simply a sect or party, not outside of 
but in the Jewish Church ; very active but also 
very Jewish ; and who continued to look upon 
that religion of Jesus as something which was 
meant particularly if not exclusively for them. 

The time came, however, when they dis- 
covered that that religion of Jesus was some- 
thing larger and more than they had supposed 
it to be, and it happened in this manner : 

Some of their number, it seems, went upon a 
journey ; from Jerusalem to Antioch, the capital 
of Syria, which was not far from Jerusalem 
measured geographically, but socially and polit- 
ically it was far, very far, and very different 
from Jerusalem. And yet to their great surprise 



GOING ON JOURNEYS TO FIND CHRIST. 217 

they found that the people of Antioch, although 
they were not Jews, were just as ready to 
respond to that religion of Jesus as they them- 
selves had been. Then they began to perceive 
that that religion of Jesus was not only the ful- 
fillment of the hopes entertained by them but of 
the hopes entertained by others ; that it was the 
fulfillment of all humanity's hopes ; that it 
somehow seemed to touch and quicken and find 
interpretation in the experience of all mankind, 
in the universal experience ; and that the more 
it came into contact with the universal experi- 
ence, the higher and deeper and more did the 
religion of Jesus become. New meanings 
dawned within it, new beauties flashed across it, 
new vistas opened before it, new powers issued 
from it — the higher and deeper and more did 
the religion of Jesus appear. And it is a signifi- 
cant circumstance that those who hitherto had 
been confining that religion to the Jewish race 
and people, preaching the Word to none save 
Jews only, and who were simply a sect or parfy 
in the Jewish Church, came now into something 
like a just and true conception of what thai 
religion was, of what it was meant f<> be, and 
were called Christians firsl at Antioch. 
That is what I mean by the phrase kk from 



218 GOING ON JOURNEYS TO FIND CHRIST. 

Jerusalem to Antioch " — the path in which the 
religion of Jesus at the outset moved, the path 
in which ever since it has continued to move. 

Look at your own personal experience of that 
religion. Is not your conception of it to-day 
something larger and more than when you first 
accepted it? than when by confirmation— or if 
not brought up in the Episcopal Church, in 
some other manner — you determined to make 
it the rule by which you would try to live. You 
thought that you understood it fairly well. 
You had your little questions to ask, and it 
answered them ; you had your little difficulties 
to remove and explain, and it explained them. 
Your knowledge of it then, as far as it went, 
was good and true and you did right to act upon 
it. And yet, as you now look back, what a 
limited knowledge it was and how much greater 
now does the scope of religion appear ! How 
much more is in it than then you thought was in 
it ; how much more in the Bible ; how much 
more in Christ ; how much more in the life 
that tries to follow Christ, and how, like some 
unfolding panoramic vision, has it been dis- 
closing new forms of beauty to you and 
causing you to perceive new thoughts, new 
meanings in it ! And how has it come to pass 



GOING ON JOURNEYS TO FIND CHRIST. 219 

that the Christ whom you see to-day, while all 
that he was when first you apprehended him, is 
also so much more? Because you have gone 
on journeys from Jerusalems to Antiochs, not 
physical journeys, but mental and moral jour- 
neys ; you have traveled further in conduct and 
wandered farther in thought and met with new 
temptations, hardships, cares, triumphs — not 
new indeed to those who had traveled that path 
before, yet which at the time you started seemed 
so strange and new to you. 

Yes, you have gone on journeys, God sent you 
upon them, and from some old Jerusalem home, 
so dear and sacred to you, some easy and pleas- 
ant place in which you had been living and in 
Avliich you wanted to live, like those early dis- 
ciples you have been driven away. Some new 
and foreign Antioch, so different from the old 
Jerusalem, has become your dwelling place, and 
there, after a while in that strange and new 
experience, like those early disciples again, you 
have learned to see new things in Christ, and to 
find new treasures in him. He has taught you 
something at Antioch, something about himself, 
something larger and more, which as you dwelt 
at Jerusalem he was not able to loach you, or 
rather which, while dwelling there, you were not 



220 GOING ON JOURNEYS TO FIND CHRIST. 

able to learn. But now you have learned it, and 
it cannot be eradicated, and no man can take it 
from you ; and although indeed at the outset 
you received the name of Christ and resolved to 
follow him and did follow him, yet now you 
feel so strongly that you scarcely knew him 
then, and that you deserved to be called a Chris- 
tian first, not at Jerusalem, but at Antioch. 
You know now what Christianity means, as then 
you did not know ; you have gone through its 
struggles and you have come out into its peace ; 
you have gone through the darkness which it 
sometimes sends, and you have come out into its 
light ; you have fought its battles, and you have 
won its victories ; you know what it is now, and 
no man can take it from you. 

This is the way, it seems to me, in which we 
learn of Christ : by going forth on journeys to 
different fields of adventure, to different phases 
of experience, into the bright days and the dark 
days, the long days and the lonely days, into all 
the days, each one of which to some extent is a 
new and different day ; and thus, by looking at 
Christ from different points of view, we have 
come to know him better and more. 

Ah, my friends, I love to think — I do think — 
that that is what the journey of life is for, from 



GOING ON JOUENEYS TO FIND CIIPJST. 221 

childhood to youth, to middle age, to old age, 
that strange and mysterious journey which you 
and I are taking, with so many strange and 
mysterious happenings in it which we cannot 
explain or prevent — that that is what it is for. 
I love to think, and I do think that that is why 
God has sent us upon it ; not to avoid all the 
rough things, nor to meet with only smooth ; 
not to gather fortunes and successes and to 
have a good time and prosper ; but that by 
going from Jerusalems to Antiochs, from old 
experiences to new, from one way of living to 
another, from the mountain-top to the valley, or 
out on the open plains, we may find new treas- 
ures in Christ ; so that when the journey of life 
is over we may in some real and true sense 
deserve to be called Christians. 

Now, having looked at the matter in connec- 
tion with our personal experience, let us look at 
it for a little while in connection with the Chris- 
tian Church at large. The Christian Church to- 
day must not dwell at Jerusalem. Let me show 
you what I mean. There are some persona who 
seem to think that the Christian religion as such 
should have nothing whatever to do with politics, 
wiili great political questions, with great eco- 
nomic questions, scientific, social, financial, com- 



222 GOIXG ON JOURNEYS TO FIND CHRIST. 

mercial questions — questions so strongly agitating 
the life of the modern world and stirring it down 
to its depths. They think and teach that the 
Christian religion should have nothing to do 
with these things, but that shutting itself up in 
some narrow sphere and circle of its own, sing- 
ing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and 
dwelling at Jerusalem and saving men's souls 
for heaven — it should have nothing to do with 
the real life of the world. 

Ah, no ; the Christian religion must not dwell 
at Jerusalem, or not exclusively there. It must 
go forth into the great, busy life of the world, 
not to discuss political questions and to tell men 
how they should vote ; not to discuss economic 
or commercial questions and so become a par- 
tisan and a disputant in the controversies of 
modern life. Xo, no, not that, not that, but 
something else and better. Its aim should be to 
try to make men understand that the Christian 
religion is wider than some would make it 
appear ; that it includes within its scope Antioch 
as well as Jerusalem, business, trade, poli- 
tics ; that the field of religion is the world, 
and that every word which a man speaks on 
any subject, no matter where he speaks it, or 
on what subject he speaks it, is a religious word. 



GOING ON JOURNEYS TO FIND CHRIST. 223 

is a Christian word, and that he is to that extent 
a religious man, a Christian man, there at 
Antioch. This is what I mean when I say that 
the Christian Church should go into the life of 
the world ; not simply to take religion there, but- 
like those early disciples when they went down 
from Jerusalem to Antioch, to find religion there, 
in all the moral efforts and struggles and aspira- 
tions of the world. It should recognize and teach 
that all the moral qualities — purity, patience, 
truthfulness, gentleness, charity, kindness, honor,- 
honesty, unselfishness — are religious qualities, 
are Christian qualities, and that the men and 
women who exhibit them in the common life of 
the world are religious men and women, are 
Christian men and women. 

Oh, let the Christian Church to-day go and 
gather up all these people for Jesus Christ ! Let 
it go and say to the student who is trying to 
find what is true, to the busy man of affairs who 
is trying to do what is right, who in the midst of 
temptations and weaknesses is trying to be pure 
and strong, " My brother, you belong to Christ. 
You may not think as we do, butstill you belong 
to Christ, and the moral and spiritual work 
which you are trying to do is the work which i he 
spirit of Jesus Chrisl is trying to do within you." 



224: GOING ON JOURNEYS TO FIND CHRIST. 

Yes, let the Christian Church go and claim all 
virtue, all truth, all goodness, for Jesus Christ. 
Let it go and teach that goodness is not two but 
one, that as far as it goes it is Christian goodness, 
that it belongs to Christ, and thus gradually let 
it gather up the whole moral life of the world 
into Jesus Christ. We often hear it said that 
the great need at present is the unity of the 
Christian Church. But it seems to me that 
there is a greater need than that ; not the unity 
of the Christian Church merely, but the unity 
of life ; not prophets merely who can walk 
about Zion and build up the walls of Jerusalem, 
but prophets who can go from Jerusalem to 
Antioch, who can say to the people there, " The 
Christ we preach and bring is no stranger to you: 
he is the Christ within you, and while it is his 
story we tell, it is your story too." Then, it seems 
to me, will we as a Christian Church have a larger 
and nobler conception of what Christianity is ; we 
will understand our Christian doctrines better, 
and how to hold them better in right and true 
proportion, for we have gone on journeys with 
them and ascertained from experience their prac- 
tical worth and value. We will understand 
better what the Christian religion is, for we have 
gone on a journey with it, and have found that 



GOING ON JOURNEYS TO FIND CHRIST. 225 

it is not only tlie fulfillment of our hopes, but the 
fulfillment of all of humanity's hopes. We will 
understand better what Jesus Christ is, for we 
have gone on a journey with him and found that 
he is not only the light that lightens us, but the 
true light, the universal light, the light that 
lightens every man that cometh into the world. 



THE MAN AND THE PRIEST. 

Amaziah said unto Amos, thou seer, go flee thee away into the 
land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there ; 

But prophesy not again any more at Beth-el ; for it is the king's 
chapel, and it is the king's court. 

Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, 
neither teas I a prophet's son ; but 1 was an herdman and a gatherer 
of sycamore fruit ; 

And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said 
unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel. — Amos vii. 12-15. 

The more one studies the Bible, not through 
the gloss of tradition, but through the medium 
of personal experience, the more is he impressed 
with its wonderf ulness and truth. It not only 
reveals Grod so admirably, it reveals us so fully, 
the deep and strong passions which are work- 
ing in us good, bad, and mixed ; the subtle tend- 
encies in us toward subterfuge and sham and 
self-deception, or the nobler and worthier quali- 
ties which at times we exhibit. It opens us up 
and portrays us, as Coleridge says— it finds us, 
brings us out from our hiding places, and makes 
us see ourselves. 

I want to call your attention at present to that 
little view of ourselves which like a mirror the 

326 



THE MAN AND THE PRIEST. 227 

words of the text disclose, to sIioav you that the 
two persons mentioned in the text may be found 
if we look for them, under different names in 
human life to-day. Who were they ? Let us see. 
Amaziah was a priest ; Amos was a man ; an 
inspired man, to be sure, and in that sense a 
prophet, but he was not a prophet by profession, 
did not belong to one of the regularly appointed 
schools of the prophets, had not received his 
training and his commission there. And that, to 
the priest, was reason enough for refusing to 
recognize him. He had no rank and title, no offi- 
cial standing, and the man, the mere man, to the 
priest was obnoxious, was regarded by him as 
presumptuous, and he plainly told him so, and 
said, "Go back to Judah, where you belong, 
you mere man, herdsman, shepherd of Tekoa, 
gatherer of sycamore fruits— go back to Judah 
where you belong, and do not come here into 
Israel meddling with our affairs, entering into 
the very palace of my master, whose court chap- 
lain I am, and speaking words against him." 
And like another distinguished statesman-priest 
of a later day, he drew the magic circle oi 
his office, not around himself, but around the 
throne, and said, "This is the king's court, this 
is the king's sanctuary; go, oh, thou seer, Into 



228 THE MAN AND THE PEIEST. 

the land of Judah, and there eat bread and 
prophesy, but prophesy not here at Bethel in 
Israel any more." 

Amos did not go, but continued to eat his 
bread and prophesy in Israel, but with his sub- 
sequent ministry there I am not at present con- 
cerned. I simply wish you to observe that these 
two persons represent two different types of char- 
acter, two different kinds of influence, or rather 
two different kinds of human tendency, which 
are not only seen in Israel but throughout all 
human life, and which now as then are so often 
seen in conflict. The first is the tendency toward 
what may be designated as officialism — toward 
the love of name and rank and title and station 
in the Church, in the state, in society generally. 
It is a very strong tendency ; and it works more 
or less in all of us. Even here in America where 
feudalistic rank has been repudiated and feud- 
alists nomenclature discarded, and where our 
ways and methods are supposed to be of a more 
popular character ; where a man is supposed to 
be measured and judged by the standard of 
personal worth, even here we feel it. For it is 
not simply a tendency inherent in the old feudal- 
istic regime; it is a tendency inherent and assert- 
ive in human nature — this tendency, I mean, to 



THE MAN AND THE PRIEST. 229 

defer not so much to the influence of what people 
are as the influence of wJiere they are and the 
positions which they occupy, and the names by 
which they are called. 

Yes, we have repudiated feudalism in America, 
but we have not repudiated human nature, and 
human nature is strong. It is stronger than 
governmental institutions and legislative de- 
crees and enactments. It will assert itself ; 
and with a strange and curious kind of contra- 
dictoriness it will sometimes assert itself more 
fully and emphatically when the attempt is 
made to repress it. Now as of old, the prohib- 
ited thing is the thing desired ; what is denied 
in one way is sought after in another. So it is in 
America. I sometimes think there is no country 
on the face of the earth where men love rank and 
title more than they do in America. They say 
that they do not, but their conduct is so often 
at variance with their speech. 

Look, for instance, at the profuse conferring 
of honorary degrees in America by our schools 
and colleges and institutions of learning, and 
some of them, too, not of a very high order. 
And why is it? It must be because the people 
of America love, not the rare learning, not 
the high scholarship, which the degrees repre 



230 THE MAN AND THE PRIEST. 

sent, or ought to represent, but simply the mere 
degrees, terms, titles, names, and the poor and 
empty honor which they confer. And how poor 
and empty it is, and how little does it mean ! 
In the Church of England if a man receives 
the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity it 
means as a rule that he has done something to 
deserve it. In America, however, it does not al- 
ways mean that he has done something to deserve 
it ; it simply means so often that he has come to be 
about forty years old. But it is not only in the 
ecclesiastical world that we see it ; we see it in 
the social and political world. What a glamour 
there is in mere office to an American ! What a 
race of office-seekers we are fast becoming ! And 
why ? Not always because we are so anxious to 
perform, and think we are so capable of perform- 
ing, the duties appertaining to the office ; not 
always either because of the direct and indirect 
pecuniary emoluments which the office gives and 
controls, for the same or greater emoluments 
might be found as easily in other spheres of con- 
duct ; but because the office itself flatters so 
sweetly, so delicately, the instinct for name and 
title in us, and gives a kind of social rank and 
standing to us, not otherwise in America so easily 
to be had. We do not have that kind of great- 



THE MAN AND THE PRIEST. 231 

ness thrust upon us by our ancestors in America. 
We are not born into it, or with it, or not so 
much at least as in other and older and more 
feudalistic countries. Nevertheless we are very 
human in America, and this tendency toward 
what I call officialism is a very human tendency. 

Now I am not deprecating all this ; still less 
am I denouncing it ; I am not saying that it is all 
bad and wrong ; I am only saying how prevalent 
it is even here and now, and in our time and 
country, as in the time of the priest Amaziah. 
This tendency of deference toward mere rank 
and title, how strongly we feel it, how eagerly 
we covet it, how imperiously we try to use it at 
times, and how, like the old priest at Bethel, Ave 
draw the circle with it, and say to those who 
have it not, " Begone ; you are not of us ! " 

It may, I say, be innocent enough, it may do 
no harm either to us or to others, if we properly 
guard and fend it ; if it does not make us ignore 
those deeper and sacreder ties which bind us 
all together ; if it does not make us forget that 
while we may desire legitimately enough to be 
priests, high priests in society, in the Church, 
in that accredited hierarchical rank which has 
always existed in the social, political, and 
ecclesiastical world, and always will exist, our 



232 THE MAN AND THE PRIEST. 

first and proper aim should not be to be priests, 
but to be men ; that a high manhood is always 
more — immeasurably, incomparably more — than 
the highest kind of priesthood. 

And here is the other tendency which we 
find in human life, and which Amos represents. 
The instinct for rank, and office, may be a very 
human instinct, but the other is also human ; 
and there is no greater word that can be spoken 
of any man or of any woman than that he has 
done some manly or she some womanly thing. 
All the commendatory adjectives of the language 
are included in that term, and we feel that there 
is no higher attainment which we can reach in 
this world than simply to have deserved it. And 
how the admiration goes freely and spontaneously 
forth toward one who has deserved it ; who, like 
the young son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, when 
Saul would place his armor on him, has put it all 
aside, and shaking himself free and lifting him- 
self up to the full stature of his manhood, with- 
out the sword of the state, without the weapon of 
the Church, without social sanction and commis- 
sion, but with simple, manly courage as his 
only equipment, has gone and faced and dis- 
comfited and conquered some formidable Philis- 
tine foe. 



THE MAN AND THE PRIEST. 233 

The story of human life has many such in- 
stances in it, nor are they wanting to-day. 
Every now and then we encounter them, and to 
our surprise where we least expect to find them. 
We read about them in the newspapers, or some- 
one tells us about them, we see them, we hear of 
them — some sweet, courageous, womanly act, 
some strong and manly deed, some going into 
danger and peril, some running of risk for 
others. " What if I do die?" said Sister 
Dora, when her friends told her not to go down 
into the infected ward of the hospital to min- 
ister to the patients there, "what if I do die? 
Death is not bad ; it only happens once and it is 
sure to happen once ; and these poor creatures 
need me." When we hear of such things as 
these, how admirable do they seem, and how 
much worthier and nobler does this other tend- 
ency which we find in human life appear ! 

Now, it is just this human tendency, it is 
just this human instinct to which the gospel of 
Jesus Christ appeals, which it seeks more and 
more to awaken and strengthen in us. Have 
I forgotten that this is Advent Sunday and 
that I ought to be speaking this morning 
about that great and memorable event, which 
at the time of its happening, now nearly two 



234 THE MAN AND THE PRIEST. 

thousand years ago, seemed to be of sucli little 
moment, but which has actually proved itself to 
be the turning point, the point of a new and 
radical departure in the history of mankind ? 
No, I have not forgotten it, and I am speaking 
about it, for what did Jesus Christ come into the 
world to do ? Many things indeed, and the pur- 
pose of his advent may be described in many 
ways, and all of them may be true. He came to 
die for us, to redeem us, to save us from our 
sins, to guide and help and comfort us, to 
establish on earth the kingdom of God and 
to make us members of it. And yet it seems 
to me it may be all summed up in this : that 
he came to touch and liberate and consummate 
the deepest and the truest humanity in us, 
came to build up manhood, came to make us 
men. To save our souls ? Yes. To make us 
Christians ? Yes. But we save our souls and 
become Christians not by becoming anything 
else or less or more than human, but by becom- 
ing human, up to the highest pitch and reach of 
human stature and attainment. The qualities 
which he develops are most human qualities. 
The strengths which he creates, the virtues which 
he produces, are human strengths and virtues, 
and the greatness to which he would lead us on, 



THE MAN AND THE PRIEST. 235 

and the glory with which he would crown us, is, 
after all, but the glory to which with deepest, 
truest instinct our human hearts aspire. 

And how does he do it? Our way, as we 
have seen, is very often to say to a man, If you 
want to be good and great, go to the priest; 
let him make you good, let him make you 
great — not to the priest in the ecclesiastical 
world perhaps, but in the political or the social 
world ; go to some high priest who holds the 
keys of entrance into that coveted world, w T ho 
can open the door and admit you and give you 
name and rank and opportunity there. Or we 
say, go and try to be a priest, to occupy place and 
position, where you can yourself dispense and 
distribute privileges, and where by reason of your 
titular rank and standing you can have power 
and exert influence and receive homage, and in 
that manner gratify the human instinct in you. 

No, says Jesus Christ, go to God, directly 
from where you are, and let his spirit inspire 
you. You build up barriers, he seemed to say 
to the men of his day, between yourselves and 
God. You have your outer and your inner 
courts, and your holy of holies, into which only 
the priest may occasionally venture to go; and 
you have kept yourselves at a distance from 



236 THE MAN AND THE PRIEST. 

God, or you have thought that he was distant 
and far away from you. But it is not true, he 
says ; there are no barriers between you and God, 
and you and greatness, and you and manhood. 
He is around you, near you, in you, in every one 
of you — the publican, the Magdalen, the outcast, 
the sinner, even the little child — let the spirit of 
God inspire you. Let it grow and blossom in 
you and bring forth fruit within you ; let it 
touch the manhood in you and make it greater 
and more — not more than human, but more 
human, and having more human power, because 
it is a manhood that rests and builds upon and 
is inspired by the spirit of God. 

That, my friends, it seems to me, comprehen- 
sively stated, was the purpose of the advent, of 
the coming of Jesus Christ — not primarily to 
make and send forth priests of one kind and 
another, but to make and to send forth men, 
and to make them great and strong. And his 
method was to teach that men are great and 
strong only when they are imbued with the 
spirit of God, when they receive their inspiration 
not from below but from above, and when they 
hear in their hearts that voice of God which all 
might hear if they would. 

That is the power, the power of an inspired 



THE MAN AND THE PIUEST. 237 

manhood which was needed then, which is 
needed now, which is always needed in doing 
the work of the world. We speak of the old 
prophets as having been inspired. So they 
were, so they were ; it was that that made them 
prophets; but " would God that all the Lord's 
people were prophets"; that they too might be 
inspired, to see large things, to do large works, 
to outline great opportunities, and to carry out 
the good impulses that the Spirit of God 
awakens. For what is a prophet but an in- 
spired man? and God, the living God, has not 
ceased to inspire men, and his spirit is in the 
world to-day as it was in the world of old ! 

May that spirit come and inspire you and me ! 
May it touch, help, guide, strengthen us in our 
weakness, give us light in our darkness, and 
hope in the cloudy day ! May it come and 
breathe like sweet music over the many chords 
of our varied human experience, and so sing 
and waft us on to that consummation of a high 
and true manhood, to which our hearts aspire, 
and which alone will last when everything else 
is gone ; singing and wafting us on to that haven 
where Ave would be, where character is the rule, 
character is the standard, character draws the 
circle, and where the man is more than the priesl I 



VISIONS. 

Where there is no vision, the people perish. — Proverbs xxix. 18. 

You must have noticed in reading the Bible 
how much there is in it about " visions," and 
how often it is taught, by implication at least, if 
not by direct statement, that men are dependent 
upon visions. The words of the text therefore 
are but the positive assertion of what the whole 
Bible seems to teach : that every human life, in 
order to fulfill itself and be successful in the 
best and highest sense, must have some bright, 
ennobling vision before it, and that " where 
there is no vision the people perish." 

My subject this morning is this : "The great- 
est benefactor of the human race is the man who 
gives the noblest visions to it." 

And first, let me speak of the world's indebt- 
edness to its visionaries. I know that the word 
"visionary" has fallen into bad repute, that it 
is often used as a term of reproach, and that 
we frequently say of a person who is wanting in 
practical judgment, in common sense, that he is 
a "visionary." And yet, although some per- 

238 



visions. 239 

sons have false, foolish, and unattainable vi- 
sions, it should not be forgotten that there is 
another sense in which to be a "visionary" is a 
mark of power. Other things being equal, that 
man will be the best equipped in this world, 
will have the greatest strength, will exhibit the 
finest courage, will do the noblest and most 
enduring work, will be the greatest man, to 
whom the best and brightest visions come. The 
men who have reached the higher forms of 
knowledge, and have given to the world the 
most ennobling truths, are men to whom the 
power of seeing visions was given. For knowl- 
edge, in its higher forms, is not reached by logic 
or demonstration. These are mental processes 
that can carry us up only to a certain point, and 
if we knew only what we could demonstrate by 
a mathematical theorem, or prove by a logical 
syllogism, the field of our knowledge would be 
a very contracted one. 

But as a matter of fact it is not so contracted. 
The men to whom the noblest and purest 
thoughts have come, by whom the largest and 
most enlarging principles have been appre- 
hended, and into whose minds the deepest 
secrets of the universe have been whispered are 
men who have gone beyond the limits of the 



240 visions. 

logical method, or of their own practical expe- 
rience, or of the practical experience of the 
world at large, and to whom, as to the prophets 
of old, the power of " seeing visions " was given. 
Professor Tyndall has published an interesting 
little essay on what he calls "The Scientific Use 
of the Imagination," the aim of which is to show 
how necessary the imagination is, even in the 
study of the physical universe. While the 
reason, he tells us, by itself and apart from the 
imagination, can make but little headway, the 
reason in connection with the imagination is 
the mightiest agent in the discovery of physi- 
cal truth. It was by his imagination, operating 
upon the simple phenomenon which he observed, 
that Newton was led to unravel the mechanism 
of the heavens. It was by his imagination that 
the eye of Galileo, looking through his tele- 
scope, saw an infinite space peopled with an 
infinite number of worlds like our own. It was 
by his imagination, operating upon the facts 
published by Mai thus in his " Essay on Popu- 
lation," that there was suggested to the mind 
of Charles Darwin that principle of " natural 
selection" which he seemed to see, as in a 
vision, running through all life, extending 
through all nature, and giving the clew to the 



visions. 241 

endless diversities of animals and of plants. 
But what is all that but another, more conven- 
tional, and not perhaps so accurate a way of 
saying that these were men to whom something 
of the old prophetic power of " seeing visions " 
was given, in whom, in the best sense of the 
word, there was something of the visionary — 
who by their visions were lifted up into larger 
life, and by their visions have lifted the world 
after them. 

If, then, it be true that the man who is want- 
ing in common sense, and is following after 
foolish and unattainable visions, and whom we 
designate as a visionary, is not fit for the duties 
of this world, it is equally true, I believe it is 
more true, that that man is not fit for the du- 
ties of this world, its highest achievement, its 
noblest work, the discovery of its greatest 
truths, the daily carrying out of its highest and 
noblest principles, to whom no visions come. 
In the midst of error he sees no vision of truth. 
In the midst of wrong he sees no vision of 
right. In the midst of confusion he sees no 
vision of order. In the midst of sin and sor- 
row he sees no vision of holiness and peace. He 
cannot look, poor little man, beyond what lias 
been already done, or what has been already 



342 yisioxs. 

attained, either by himself or the world at large, 
to something better still to come, something 
brighter and more beautiful yet to make its 
appearance upon this earth, and his life, in 
consequence, has no high and strong and gener- 
ous inspiration to it. Such a man is not fit for 
the duties of this world. His life becomes more 
and more insipid, dreary, weary, and common- 
place as the years go by. He has no courage to 
sustain him when the dark hour comes. He has 
nothing to gladden his daily, monotonous routine 
and make it joyous and bright, nothing to keep 
him " forging ahead/' with an indomitable will, 
with an invincible courage, in the face of dis- 
aster and difficulty, and ambition flags, hope 
droops, love weakens, faith departs, and enthu- 
siasm dies. I say that such a man is not fit for 
the duties of this world ; the best possibilities of 
his existence he can never realize ; and truly, as 
the wise man has said, i; where there is no vision 
the people perish." 

I cannot imagine anyone, then, to whom we 
owe a greater debt, who can be of greater assist- 
ance to us than the man who in the midst of 
this hard, practical, sorrowing, sinning, work- 
a-day world, can give us the bright vision 
of some other world. I cannot imagine any- 



VISIONS. 241] 

one who can help us more than the man who 
in the midst of the trite and commonplace 
truths upon which we have been feeding until 
we have taken all the nourishment out of 
them, can come to us with the quickening and 
inspiring vision of some larger truth, or who in 
the midst of the darkness and the dreariness, 
at times, of our human life, can keep the bright, 
unfading vision before us of some higher and 
more ennobling life. Such a man will always be 
the greatest of our benefactors. The world has 
always needed such a man. It needs such a 
man to-day. 

Now, in my office of Christian preacher, I 
have no words of disparagement for those men 
who by other than religious processes, in the 
usual construe! ion of that term, have given 
so much brightness, so much enlargement to 
the scope of hitman life: poets, philosophers, 
artists, statesmen, astronomers, scientists, politi- 
cal economists — the great and gifted men in all 
lines of human pursuit and endeavor, through 
whom some comfort and beauty and light 
and wisdom have come into human life, and to 
whom the power of seeing visions was given. 
These men, too, are our benefactors. Every 
man is our benefactor who by any means, to any 



244 visions. 

extent, can part the clouds above us and let 
some new glory in upon human life. But 
among all such benefactors, and easily chief 
/among them stands, and will forever stand, 
Jesus of Nazareth. Let us look for a few 
moments at some of the bright and enduring 
visions which he has given us. 

He has given us the noblest vision of right- 
eousness — not righteousness for a particular time 
or place, but righteousness for everywhere, for 
always and for all, and which Ave feel instinct- 
ively to be the righteousness of God. Is it 
not so? 

"To the great majority of persons," said the 
late Cardinal Newman, " who look out upon this 
world, all that they find there meets their 
mind's eye very much as a landscape addresses 
itself for the first time to a person who has just 
gained his bodily vision. It is all confusion ; 
one thing is as far off as another ; there is no 
law, no order, no harmony, no perspective in 
it." 

Now and then, however, he might have added, 
persons have appeared on this earthly plane 
who have been able to see running through all 
this tangled mass of apparent disorder the great 
pervading, binding lines of everlasting law. 



visions. 245 

What some men have clone in this respect 
for jurisprudence, what some have done in this 
respect for astronomy and for science, towering 
far above these splendid and ever memorable 
tasks is the work done for righteousness by- 
Jesus of Nazareth. He took hold of the vast 
tangled mass of casuistry and Pharisaic tra- 
dition, which had become so deeply rooted in the 
popular mind of his day: he touched it and it 
shriveled, its meretricious beauty faded, and from 
the ashes he picked up a few pearls of great 
price that were worth preserving, and put them 
upon his own brow to shine there forever. 
From all the testimony of the past, laying aside 
and rejecting what was not according to eternal 
right, he brought out, not only for that day, 
but for this day, for every day, till the last day 
comes, great flashing principles, high as heaven, 
deep as hades, simple as a little child, on which 
he made all the law and all the prophets 
to rest. From the massive and cumbersome 
conventionalism of religious customs and social 
traditions and precepts of the elders, he 
brought out those principles of a true righteous- 
ness, which lie to-day and will continue to lie 
at the base of all our benches of justice, all our 
social relations, all our national development 



246 visions. 

and prosperity, all our domestic purity, all our 
individual nobleness, which the world never dis- 
putes, never dreams of disputing, however much 
it may be tempted practically to disobey them, 
and to which it is forever making its solemn 
appeal, and carrying up its great case in equity, 
as into its ultimate court, as into the court of God. 

But not only has Jesas of Nazareth given us 
the purest vision of righteousness, he has also 
given us the noblest and most appealing vision 
of love. Is not that the meaning of his Cross 
and passion ? The agony in the Garden, the 
great drops of bloody sweat, the scourging, the 
mocking, the Crucifixion itself, the darkness over 
the land, the great heart-breaking cry sounding 
out through the darkness— why does it touch our 
hearts so much? Why has it so profoundly 
touched the heart of the world? Why has it 
always been such a power and is it such a power 
to-day, that the strongest and stoutest manhood 
has been bowed in submission as a little child be- 
fore it ; that the weakest and timidest womanhood 
has been emboldened by it ; that the Magdalene 
has been purified; that the drunkard has 
been reformed, and the mourner comforted? 

Oh, who is gifted enough, whose voice is sweet 
enough to tell the story of the triumph of the 



visions. 247 

cross of Christ throughout all the ages ? Sweeter 
than the music of the sweetest singer of the 
world, stronger than the eloquence of the most 
gifted orator, more than all the dogmatic teach- 
ing of the churches, the philosophies of the 
schools, the laws and statutes of the strongest 
state, has been the conquering, strengthening, 
healing, peace-imparting power of the cross of 
Christ. And why ? Because it is the manifesta- 
tion somehow — explain it as men may — of the 
love of the eternal God, and has always been 
felt to be so. 

Again, Jesus Christ gives us not only the 
noblest vision of God, his righteousness and his 
love, but also the noblest and most helpful 
vision of ourselves. He does not come telling 
us what weak, miserable, wretched creatures we 
are. We know it, and the knowledge does not 
help us any. He simply allows us, in himself, 
a more glorious vision of human life, and as we 
look upon that more glorious vision of human 
life, its glory passes a little into us. We do in 
some measure forsake our sins. Their dominion 
over us is in some measure broken, not because 
Ave are looking at our sins and seeing how ugly 
and how degrading they are, bul because we are 
looking at the vision of Chrisi and seeing how 



248 visions. 

glorious he was, in whom there was no sin. We 
do in some measure learn to be brave and patient 
under the provocations and the annoyances and 
the burdens and trials of life, not because we are 
trying to be brave and patient under them, — we 
have tried over and over again and have not suc- 
ceeded, — but because we are looking at that 
brave and patient One, who, in the midst of 
trials, discouragements, desertions, denials such 
as no man ever experienced, has yet exhibited a 
grandeur and a glory of character in connection 
with them such as no one else has ever dis- 
played. We have in some measure parted with 
the fear and dread of death, not because our 
physical dissolution is any the less revolting 
to us when we come to think about it ; not 
because the grave and the tomb are any the less 
loathsome to us ; not because to leave behind 
those we love is any the less distressing to us, but 
because in looking back over the history of the 
j)ast we see the bright vision of a victory over 
death, and take to our hearts the hope that 
death is but the birth-throe into a more abun- 
dant life. And so as we look at that vision its 
glory passes into and transfigures us. 

Yes, and more than that, for not only does it 
transfigure us, but it somehow seems to trans- 



visions. 249 

figure all the people about us ; and back of the 
mask of the sinner and behind the veil of his 
wretchedness and his sin, looking through the 
vision of Christ, we can see the glory of God. 
All human life has a new significance for us. 
We read its story over again. We see new 
meaning, new promise in it. In no case must it 
be despised. In no case must we despair of it. 
Jesus Christ has taught us the transcendent 
value and greatness of human life, even in its 
feeblest and most degraded forms. Therefore 
we must care for it, love it, shelter it, do 
the best things for it, hope the best things 
from it. And so, in the light of the vision 
of Christ, moving along the dark pathway 
of the centuries, the churches have come, and 
the hospitals have come, and the nurseries have 
come, and the homes for the poor, sick, aged, 
crippled, and infirm, and even for the little chil- 
dren, have come — who, except for that vision of 
Christ and for what it has moved men to do, 
would have been left alone and would have 
perished long ago. 

Then from this vision of God, his righteous- 
ness and his love, and from tin's vision of man 
and the glory latent in him, there comes the 
brightest vision of the future of human life on 



250 visions. 

the earth. Sometimes as we look out on human 
life and see the moral disorders that are prev- 
alent there, we think in our hearts that the 
world at large is making but little progress in 
truth and goodness — perhaps no progress at 
all. It seems to be going backward and peri- 
lous times are at hand. This is a view of 
human life that one is apt to take as he gets 
older, and his thoughts concerning the future are 
not so roseate in his later as in his earlier days ; 
The " Locksley Hall" of the poet's younger 
manhood, so full of promise and cheery hope for 
the future, is not the " Locksley Hall" of the 
poet's age — with so much sadness and so much 
bitterness and so much misgiving in it. But in 
the light of the vision of Christ there is no room 
for misgiving. The earlier poem is the truer ; 
and in response to the cry that goes up, " Watch- 
man, what of the night?" we can always say, 
" Behold ! the morning cometh." Seeing that, 
we can go on into the future with unfaltering 
courage and in spite of everything, with an 
undismayed hope. We preach whether men hear 
or whether men forbear, because we know the 
time is coming when the kingdoms of this world 
will become the kingdom of the Son of Man ; all 
nations will belong to it, all peoples will be part 



visions. 251 

of it, all languages will be heard in it. "His 
dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall 
not pass away." But except for that vision 
of Christ, we cannot preach, we cannot work, we 
cannot give, we have no heart for anything, and 
our thoughts for the future perish. 

May God keep that vision before us as a pillar 
of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and 
when the darkness comes and doubts gather and 
bewilderments multiply, like the disciples on 
Tabor, may we lift up our eyes and see no man 
save " Jesus only." 



CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT 
OF HIM. 

Bat we trusted that it had been he which should haw redeemed 
Israel. — St. Luke, xxiv. 21. 

It is the third day after the crucifixion of 
Christ, and the hopes of his disciples have been 
cast down and their hearts much depressed by 
the sad event. They had been in a measure 
prepared for it, it is true, and yet after all 
they were not prepared. They thought, appar- 
ently, that at the last moment and when the 
crisis came, instead of quietly submitting to his 
enemies he would in some remarkable way 
assert himself and escape and get the victory 
over them. In this, however, they had been dis- 
appointed. His views concerning his work, its 
nature, its method, its scope, were different from 
theirs ; and while they were looking for him to 
appear through the avoidance of death as the 
Redeemer of Israel, he was preparing himself to 
become, by yielding to death, the Redeemer of 
the world. 



CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 253 

And tins suggests my topic, that from the 
beginning of Christian history God has been 
giving to men a conception of Jesus Christ 
which was greater and more than they had 
thought him to be. Let us give our attention 
for a little while to the consideration of it. It is 
a fact as indisputable as it is unique that, since 
Jesus Christ appeared in history, the thoughts 
of men everywhere have been directed toward 
him. All their aspirations have sooner or later 
touched him, and all their inquiries of what- 
ever sort, moral and intellectual, have found 
their climax in him. It was but natural, there- 
fore, that they should try to express, and in some 
formal way, what they thought of him, who was 
always somehow coming into their thought ; and 
however much some persons to-day may be 
averse to creeds, may deprecate their existence 
— it was simply inevitable that they should ap- 
pear, as in fact they have appeared in Chris- 
tendom from the outset. 

It is also a fact that none of these creeds have 
been final, though men often thought that they 
were and put them forth as such. But another 
age has come with another line of inquiry run- 
ning into and merging itself in another and richer 
conception of Jesus Christ, and another creed lias 



254 CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 

eared. The Apostolic symbol, or the Apos- 
tles' creed, as we call it, however it came to be. 
and which was at first quite enough, was by and 
by developed into the Xicene Creed, as that again 
was revised and supplemented and made some- 
what larger than it was in its primitive form. 
And so the work went on. the earlier creed was 
eloped into and swallowed up in the later. 
receiving new and further interpretation from it. 
For a long time. I know, thi ?ess of ^reed- 

development stopped, but then it was a time 
when nearly all original thinking and investiga- 
tion had stopped. During the Middle Ages— 
the Dark Ages, as we sometimes call them — the 
Church was almost at a srandstill. or was simply 
going round in its beaten path, threshing its old 
straw over and over again and finding its moral 
and spiritual food in its old conventional phrase, 
that had beeome conventional husks. 

When, however, at the time of the Eenaissanee, 
Greece crossed the Alps and came into Western 
Europe, a new activity came, new and strange 
questions were started in mens minds, new forces 
were liberated in society, new hopes, new aspira- 
tions dawned, and a new horizon appeared. Then 
i: was. when the minds of men began to move and 
work again, and to ask new cpi^stkms and to [ 



CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 255 

ceed in new directions, that new doctrinal state- 
ments concerning Jesus Christ and his truth 
began to appear again. And it is a simple fact 
of history that, during the short period of thirty 
years, at the close of the Reformation, more 
than twenty dogmatic Confessions of Faith were 
added to the three great creeds which had here- 
tofore sufficed for the whole of the Christian 
world. And these creeds were put forth by men 
who did not doubt the old ones, but who said to 
themselves and said wisely, "The old ones need 
further finish and statement to make them com- 
prehensive and coordinate with the new and 
additional facts, forces, thoughts, which the new 
situation reveals." 

And what was the result ? Can any man fail 
to see it, except him whose eyes are so blinded 
by prejudice that he cannot see any fact which 
makes against him, be it ever so clear? What 
was the result of all this theological and ecclesi- 
astical ferment and discussion and controversy 
at the time of the Reformation I Christian faith 
was not destroyed or hurt or weakened by it, but 
strengthened rather, and helped. Jesus Christ 
became not less to men, but more than ever 
before; doing more for them, appealing more to 
them, quickening their zeal, deepening their love. 



256 CHRIST GREATER THAX OUR THOUGHT. 

expanding their vision of him — a richer, lar_ 
dearer Christ than men had thought him to : 

Thus, in looking back with a necessarily short 
review over the histoi Christendom, we find. 

I say. this fact: that no one period in it has 
given full and final statement concerning C 
in Jesus Christ and the truth of God which he 
revealed : but that from the c ntset, fix m :he time 
when he was looked upon by his first disc:; 
as the Redeemer of Israel only, he has I 
coming to men as something larger and more 
than the scope of their thought ining him. 

Well, men and women, shall we learn and profit 
by this lesson of history — we who are living at 
a time like that of the Renaissance ; when new 
forces have been liberated in society, when new 
facts have been sed by physical scie:; 

when new an d strange processes oi thinking are 
moving and working in men's minds : shall 

fit by this lesson of ^history \ Or must we 
fed, as some do. that this "modern thought." as 
it is termed, is hostile to Jesus Christ and the 
truth he embodied and taught, and that, the 
b, it is our duty to fight against and resist 
I- seems to me that this, while zealous, would be 
st anwise. 

OldLudovic* Vivos, Thomas Carlyle tells as, 



CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 257 

relates the story of a countryman who fell afoul 
his barnyard beast and slew it because, forsooth, it 
had drunk up the moon ; but it was not the moon 
which the beast had drunk up, but simply the 
reflection of the moon in the countryman's own 
poor water pail. This beast of " modern thought," 
as some persons would characterize it, has not 
destroyed Jesus Christ, is not undermining his 
power over the heart and mind of the world, 
though sometimes, perhaps, it appears to do so, 
as did, I presume, the countryman's beast the 
moon ; it is simply destroying some little piece, 
or part, some little imperfect fragment, of our 
reflection of Christ. 

Has it not been so in our own past career ? 
Have there not been some changes in our concep- 
tion of Christ, and of the truth of God which he 
taught and revealed ? I submit it to you, do you 
hold precisely, and in all particulars, the faith 
that you learned in your childhood ? Have you 
made no progress in your interpretation of it ; 
going down to its deeper depths, rising up and 
scaling its higher heights, and giving wider 'scope 
and horizon to it? Then you have done no 
thinking, and have been like the Church in the 
Middle Ages — at a standstill. Bat that, 1 am 
sure, has not been the case. How often have i 



258 CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 

heard men say : " We were brought up to believe 
thus and so," and then they have told me stories 
of what their teachers taught them, or their 
fathers, good Christian men, made them do ; of 
how their minister preached and of the sermons 
they used to hear, and how at times they were 
frightened by them and kept awake at nights. 
I am sure that must have been the case with 
many in this congregation. 

Well, would you go back to^ them now ? Can 
you go back to them now % If you did, you would 
find that they are not there ; that the old teach- 
ers and preachers have themselves changed, and 
that even the most conservative man has modified 
to some extent — I should say, has grown in his 
apprehension of the truth of God revealed in 
Jesus Christ. And if it has been so, why should 
it not be so again ? Why should it not be so 
now % Is there any man prepared to say : " My 
conception of Christ is perfect and entire, my 
thought reflects him wholly, my creed reveals 
him fully ; I know all that can be said about 
him, and no one to-day or to-morrow can tell me 
anything more" ? 

And if he cannot say so, why should he not 
listen to what to-day or to-morrow men may have 
to tell him ? It may be something new, some- 



CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 259 

tiling strange and different from what lie has 
held before; it may modify and change a little 
his previous way of thinking. But suppose it 
does. You remember the story that Lecky tells, 
in one of his books, of the prisoner into 
whose cell the light came through a little 
crack in the wall, and who remonstrated bit- 
terly against the destruction of the wall be- 
cause it would destroy the crack through which 
the daylight came. Possibly some of us have 
been looking at this wonderful Jesus Christ, 
more wonderful than the richest and best thought, 
through little cracks in the wall erected by 
prejudice and prepossession and denominational 
zeal, and if it be the effect of what we call 
" modern thought" to destroy the wall, the 
ultimate result will be to make Jesus Christ, the 
heart of history, the hope of the ages, the light 
of the world, not something less, but something 
greater and more. 

And that I wish to make the burden of my 
sermon to-day. I do not Avish anyone to go 
away this morning and say : " The preacher was 
in sympathy with modern destructive criticism, 
with all those who are trying to hurt or weaken 
Christian faith." Ah, no! If Hint were the 
case, 1 would not only preach no sermon to-day. 



260 CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 

but I would preach, no sermon ever, and my 
mouth would be closed. But my aim is just the 
opposite of that ; my purpose is to make you feel, 
as I do so strongly, that Jesus Christ is not less, 
but more, than what we as yet have apprehended 
him to be ; that he will become, through all this 
ferment of modern discussion and criticism and 
controversy a larger, richer, dearer Christ, and a 
greater Redeemer and a more precious Saviour 
to us. 

No one, it seems to me, who has learned to 
look at the present in the light of the past, 
through the medium of an historic judgment, can 
doubt that for a moment. Such an one does not 
stand simply on the shifting sands of to-day, 
but on the rock that is under to-day, and believ- 
ing in the living God of history, and in his living 
Christ, he stands securely there. The tempests 
rage, the winds sweep and blow, the floods lift 
up their waves — some little piece or fragment 
that has obscured our outlook of this wonderful 
Christ may be carried away ; it matters not, I 
care not, for Christ is more and more, and will 
become, more and more, the Helper, the Friend, 
the Redeemer, the Saviour of mankind. 

Do we not see some little sign in evidence of it 
already ? Is there not coming to people to-day 



CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 201 

that larger conception of Christ which is born of 
personal loyalty and love ? What is the mean- 
ing of that impatience with doctrinal preaching 
which you and others express ? 

What is the significance of the fact that the 
preachers to-day do not and cannot make the 
doctrines so prominent in preaching ? What 
does it mean? Not that the old doctrines are 
not good and at times helpful, of great service to 
us and must be presented and taught, but that 
love for Jesus Christ and loyalty to Jesus Christ 
is something better and more. This, therefore, 
above all else is what the Church to-day is trying 
to promote: to make the great constituency of 
its membership, the men and women who are 
gathered in our congregations and the children 
in our families and our Sunday schools, lovers 
of Jesus Christ, the great, strong, and mighty 
lover of human souls. Then with this love for 
Christ in their hearts, the creeds will be no 
obstacle and difficulty in their way. They will 
look back over the creeds of Christendom, and 
will be glad and rejoice that men in the pasl 
have said such wonderful things about him ; will 
feel that it has not been too strong, dial i( has 
not born too much — oh, how can too much ever 
be said of One whom more than life we love! 



262 CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 

that it has not been enough, that it might have 
been much more. Creeds and doctrines will not 
become abstract propositions to them, to be dis- 
cussed with controversial temper. They will go 
to the heart of the creeds, will see that they are 
but a testimony all too feeble of that personal 
love and loyalty to Christ which they themselves 
possess. Yes, this larger Christ is coming to 
men to-day, and the world is beginning to see 
that however good and true and valuable the 
creeds may be, the Christ who touches the heart, 
to whom the heart responds, who makes it aflame 
with personal love and loyalty to himself, is 
greater and better than they. 

Is it not also being borne in upon the con- 
sciousness of the Christian Church to-day that 
Jesus Christ is not simply the Redeemer of 
Israel, a choice and favored few, but that he is 
the Redeemer of the world and the whole world ? 
Is it not beginning more and more to appear that 
the Christ of the rich and cultivated man is the 
Christ of the illiterate and the poor ; that the 
Christ of the capitalist and the millionaire is the 
Christ of the laboring man and the pauper, of 
the white man and the black, of the copper- 
colored Mongolian and the red-faced Indian 
savage ? Is it Hot becoming evident that the 



CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 263 

Christ of those who come from pleasant and 
comfortable homes along our avenues to our 
Episcopal churches is the Christ of those who 
have no homes, who are wandering homeless 
through our streets, or crowded into our tene- 
ment houses and finding shelter there — the 
Christ, not of the few, but the Redeemer of all ? 

Sometimes we have thought, or some of us 
have thought, that Christ indeed was to be the 
Redeemer of America ; that the Christian reli- 
gion was especially adapted to us but not fitted 
exactly for other nations. But China is opening 
her doors to-day, Japan is opening her doors, 
the fields of India are white for the harvest, and 
the Christ who is the Redeemer of the American 
nation, we are more and more being driven to 
see is the Redeemer of the world. 

And finally, should not this very day with its 
sweet and holy associations and inspirations give 
us this larger conception of Christ ? For I have 
not forgotten that this is All Saints' Day— the 
day of all the tribes and kindreds and nations 
and tongues, as we heard just now in the Epistle. 
The saints of all the ages, of all the lands, of all 
the faiths we commemorate to-day; the saints 
of our household, and the saints of all the 
households ; of the men and women everywhere 



264 CHRIST GREATER THAN OUR THOUGHT. 

for whom Christ lived and died, and who lived 
and died for him ; upon whom, as his true and 
faithful witnesses, he has set his seal, and whom 
now, their warfare over and their victory won, in 
some bright and happy world he has gathered 
around himself. By the inspiration of this fes- 
tival day we are made to see that the Redeemer 
of our little Israel is the Redeemer of the Avorld. 
This is the refrain which I have wanted you 
to hear running through the sermon to-day, to 
make you feel that Jesus Christ throughout all 
the ages has been becoming more and more to 
the world. May he become more and more to us, 
unfolding to our hearts, as the years go quickly 
by, a larger and richer vision of his own eternal 
self! 



THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 

Remember that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, according 
to my gospel.— 2 Timothy ii. 8. 

The gospel of the Resurrection which we 
commemorate to-day was in an especial sense 
the gospel preached by St. Paul, from which 
he gathered his courage, his inspiration, his 
hope, his brightest dreams for the future, and 
to which, in all his writings, he gave the promi- 
nent place. With the preaching of that gospel 
he began his ministry and closed it. "I 
delivered unto you first of all," he writes in 
his earliest letter to the Corinthian Church, 
"that which I also received, how that Jesus 
Christ died for our sins and that he rose again." 
And when, as Paul the aged, he is about to pass 
away from the scene of his earthly warfare, in 
writing to his son, Timothy, in the faith, he 
gives the parting message as though it were the 
thing which above all else he would have him 
bear in mind: "Remember — remember that 
Jesus Christ was raised from the dead." 

That, I say, was the special message preached 

265 



266 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 

by St. Paul, which he called his gospel, because 
he preached it so often, and which this Easter 
Day is preaching now to the world. It would 
be enough, perhaps, to let the day itself 
preach, and testify to the joy it inspires, and to 
which, by blooming flower and brilliant color 
and jubilant strains of music, we are trying to 
give expression — to let the day itself preach, 
and testify, by the joy it inspires, to the reality 
of the fact and faith which it represents, thus 
assuring our hearts that that which makes us all 
so glad this Easter day certainly must be true. 

But with the hope of confirming your faith in 
it, let me try this morning to say a few things 
about it, and first this : 

The gospel of the Resurrection is not a new 
gospel ; it is the natural outgrowth from the 
Good Friday gospel. During the past week we 
have been studying that gospel, and trying to 
learn and take to heart the lesson which it 
teaches, of the infinite love of God. That is -the 
Good Friday gospel — the gospel of the Cross ; 
and a glorious gospel it is, in which, as we saw 
last Sunday, St. Paul so much rejoiced. 

See what follows from it. The tendency of 
love, the desire of love, is to give the best 
it can — to give its very life, its very self ; 



THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 267 

and the greater the love, the stronger is the 
tendency and the greater the desire. We go to 
one who is dear to us, and say, " Let me do 
something for you. Are you in trouble ? Let 
me help you to bear it. Are you in want? Let 
me supply it. Do you stand in need of a friend 
at this particular juncture, to serve you in your 
distress? Let me be that friend," and how 
grieved, how disappointed we are when we find 
that we cannot be of any assistance to him. 
That, I say, is the law, is the nature of love ; 
nothing is too high, too costly for it, no sacrifice 
too great ; it delights, it revels in sacrifice, and 
is forever trying to give its joy, its substance, 
its life, to those who call it forth. 

Men and women, is it not so ? If, then, the 
love of God be anything like our own, it must 
have that same inclination in it, and be spon- 
taneously actuated by that same desire. But 
the love of God, while like our own, is very 
much greater than ours. It is an eternal love. 
No amount of human sin, so Good Friday 
taught us, can overcome and destroy it. It 
meets it at its worst, i(s highest point of develop- 
ment, feels its full malignity, suffers all it can 
do, all the pain it can inflict, the insult which it 
can offer, mockery, scourging, shame, yel gets 



268 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 

the victory over it. Waters cannot quench it ; 
waves cannot drown it ; flames cannot consume 
it. It is an eternal, an inexhaustible love, and 
therefore must — it is a necessity — be forever 
trying to give its own eternal life to men. 

So we see how the gospel of the Resurrection 
seems to spring by a natural outgrowth from the 
gospel of Good Friday, and Easter is written 
upon the Cross. 

Again, it is the instinct, — those of you who 
know what love is know that it is so, — it is the 
instinct, it is the nature of one who loves to 
keep forever near him the persons whom he 
loves. " Father, I will that those whom thou 
hast given me be with me where I am." That is 
the voice, not only of the love of Jesus Christ ; 
it is the voice of all love. That is the way in 
which it always speaks. Can you not under- 
stand it? Has it not often so spoken in your 
hearts ? Is it not so speaking in the hearts of 
men and women to-day all over the face of the 
earth? It is the burden of the prayer that is 
going up from the bedside where love is kneel- 
ing down and saying in behalf of those who are 
lying there and upon whom the shadow of death 
is falling, "I will that those whom thou hast 
given me be with me where I am." 



THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 2G9 

That is what love is always trying to do ; to 
gather those around itself upon whom it is 
bestowed, and to keep them there, and whose 
utterance to this effect we are made to hear 
wherever love prevails ; in the circle of friend- 
ship, in the family life, in the household re- 
unions on the anniversary days — "that those 
whom thou hast given me be with me where I 
am." At the baptismal font, where the parent 
tries to fold his child more closely to his heart, 
to bring it more intimately into that Christian 
faith where he himself is standing ; at the mar- 
riage altar, where the holy union is formed which 
only an act of God or an act of treachery can 
break ; at the open grave, where love is stronger 
than death, where it cannot help protesting, as 
against an unnatural thing, at the severance 
which death has made ; yes, everywhere, on 
every occasion, where love lights up and warms 
the heart, this is the voice we hear : " That those 
whom thou hast given me be with me where 1 
am." 

Again I say, men and women, that if the love 
of God be anything like our own, if i( be love al 
all in any legitimate sense of the term, it must 
feel as we do, and have the same desire (or i1 Is 
not love) to keep the life thai it loves forever 



270 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 

near it and to hold it fast. It was in the con- 
fident assurance of that eternal love, because he 
felt it more than we, and saw more deeply into 
its own essential nature, that Jesus Christ 
declared, " My sheep hear my voice and they 
shall never perish ; nothing shall pluck them 
out of my father's hand, who loves them, and he 
will keep them near himself and hold them 
fast." 

So again I say the Resurrection gospel comes 
out of the Good Friday gospel, and Easter is 
written on the Cross. 

Our survival of death, therefore, resolves itself 
simply into a question of God's ability. We 
know that he does desire to keep us fast, and 
not to let us perish, because he loves us. That 
is the nature of love, the one thing in ethics of 
which we can be sure, as of a demonstration ; 
that is the nature of love. 

God does desire to keep us and to hold us fast 
and not to let us perish. The question is, Can 
he do it ? and when it comes to that " can he do 
it ?" — the God, whose power is so great that we 
can trace no boundary around it, can set no limit 
to it, and of which we are forced to say that it is 
an immeasurable pow T er — when that becomes the 
question, it is no longer a question. Yes, and 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KESUREECTION. 271 

more than that ; it resolves itself simply into a 
question of God's existence. For every instinct 
of the human heart, apart from the teaching of 
religion, tells us that God is supremely good. 
There can be no other God than a good God, 
and what is goodness but love ? and it is this 
belief of man in infinite goodness or love, com- 
bined with infinite power, which has inspired his 
heart with the inextinguishable hope of an im- 
mortal life, and which the Resurrection of Jesus 
Christ confirms. 

It is not necessary, therefore, that we should 
go to-day into questions of historical evi- 
dence to prove the Resurrection of Jesus Christ 
from the dead, although such evidence exists and 
abounds. There is first the undoubted fact that 
immediately after the crushing disappointment 
of the Crucifixion, some events did occur which 
suddenly gave a joyful animation and a wide 
expansion to the whole Christian Church. Then 
we have the testimony of all the disciples that 
that event was nothing less than the Resurrec- 
tion of Jesus Christ from the dead, and then 
again, there is no other competing theory upon 
the subject that has stood the test o( critical 
examination or that is worthy of a moment's 
consideration. 



272 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESUREECTION. 

But these are questions which all persons are 
not qualified to entertain and to debate ; neither 
is it necessary. Believe in the eternal, love of 
God, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from 
the dead, instead of seeming to you an improba- 
ble thing, with many presumptions against it 
will be in the line of what you are led to expect. 

With that inward temper and predisposition 
toward it, the evidences which have come down 
will be full and ample, and more than sufficient 
for you. Without that inward temper and pre- 
disposition toward it, no amount of historical 
evidence would convince you, even though one 
should rise from the dead this Easter Day before 
your very eyes. You would say that he was 
simply awakened from a trance, or that there 
was some illusion in it. 

" People as a rule do not believe a thing," 
says Professor Mozley, " on the strength of 
external evidence alone." There must be some 
sympathy, some kindred feeling for it, or they 
cannot come into the persuasion or even appreci- 
ation of it. If Columbus had not had in him 
the spirit of discovery, to use Dr. Mozley' s illus- 
tration, he would never have seen the evidences 
which he did see in behalf of a western hemi- 
sphere lying beyond the hitherto trackless 



THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 273 

waters, could never have rightly interpreted the 
different scattered facts which threw some light 
upon it, and which bore in upon his mind the 
conviction that the continent was there. And it 
is only when we have that spirit of eternal love 
in our hearts which we have been commemorating 
during the past week that we can appreciate at 
their full worth and value the historical evi- 
dences that have come down to us in behalf of 
the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 
and believe that eternal love has given eternal life. 
And now, having tried to show you that the 
gospel of the Resurrection comes out of the 
Good Friday gospel, let me proceed as briefly as 
I can to speak of the blessedness of that gospel, 
and of the glory which it throws around this 
mortal span of our earthly life. I am not dis- 
posed to depreciate the importance and blessed- 
ness of this earthly life. I certainly do not 
think that our time here should be spent in the 
absorbing contemplation of the hereafter, and 
that all the pleasures of existence in this world 
should be surrendered by us as though they 
were of no account. They are of much account. 
It is a glorious world. Can a man open his eyes 
in it this bright Easter morning and not believe 
it? God made it. 



274 THE GOSPEL OF THE EESURRECTIOlSr. 

It is a glorious thing simply to be alive, to feel 
strength and vigor bounding through our frames, 
to grow in heart and mind, and enrich ourselves 
with affection, to see new forms of beauty, to 
catch new visions of right, to come into contact 
more and more with truth, to rejoice in the 
splendid conquests over his earthly environment 
which the spirit of man has effected, to behold 
from year to year, almost from day to day, a 
better knowledge, a higher wisdom, a fuller 
light, streaming in upon him and giving thereby 
a wider horizon to him. 

It is a glorious thing just to be alive. But, 
ah ! how much more glorious it is when we know 
that the life in which we rejoice will go on and 
not die ; that when this house of clay, beau- 
tifully and wonderfully made, yet this house 
of clay shall have B been taken down ; when it 
shall have become too fragile and weather-beaten 
by the storms of earth to hold us any more, 
we shall not be cast out to perish, but shall sim- 
ply move on into some better and roomier house 
which the eternal love that holds us fast has 
provided for us. It is sweet and good to live, 
but how much sweeter and better when we know 
that what we call death will be merely a letting 
go of that which we can no longer hold, a casting 



THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 275 

off of that which can no longer serve us, a going 
out from that which is but a prison door, and 
when everything that is mortal about us will 
be swallowed up in the more abundant life. 

What a much more glorious thing is that, and 
what glory does it give to our earthly life ! 

Again, while it would still be our duty, even 
if there were no prospect of another world, to 
live a high and noble life, — no man can question 
that, — to do justly, to love mercy, to live purely, 
to meet with a brave and resolute front the 
difficulties of our lot, and to take an earnest and 
active part in all humanitarian and educational 
work ; how much more efficiently will we perform 
that duty in the light of the Easter hope ? While 
it would still be our duty to put our shoulder 
to the chariot wheel of human progress when 
it drags heavily, to do all in our power for the 
advancement and enlightenment of our fellow- 
men and to make both ourselves and the world 
as pure and bright and fair as we possibly 
could, yet how much more bravely will we 
enter upon that duty, and how much more 
efficiently will we perform it, when the broad 
bright arch of an eternal life is stretched over 
our heads and light from heaven shines \\\^>n 
our path ! 



276 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 

It is the duty of the mariner to carry his ves- 
sel across the waters. His duty is on the ship, 
and he must not let it go without him. He 
must keep it balanced and trimmed, and stand 
at the post of danger ; must protect the varied 
interests which have been committed to him, and 
at the cost of his life, must try to conduct them 
iu safety to the haven where they would be. His 
duty is on the ship. But, ah ! how much more 
efficiently will he perform his duty, how much 
stouter his heart, how much higher his courage, 
how much greater the confidence which he pos- 
sesses in himself and which he inspires in others, 
how much more intelligent his commands, when 
from time to time he can look at the heavens 
above him and find from the lights that are 
shining there the path upon the watery waste 
in which the vessel should move, and in which 
through storm and wind and wave, he is trying 
to guide and keep it ! 

So does the glad gospel of this Easter Day, and 
the bright vision which it gives of an eternal life, 
put new courage, new strength, new intelligence 
into our task. Can any man doubt it ? Does it 
not take the efforts which we make in this world 
in behalf of our fellow-men, transfigure them 
with its brightness, ennoble them with its far- 



THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 277 

reaching outlook, and throw a new glory around 
them ? 

And yet again, what a great and glorious thing 
is human love ! How empty, how sad, how dark 
the world without it ! It is the light that shines 
upon us to guide us on our way and illumine the 
clouds about us ; our shelter from the stormy 
blast, our refuge and our home. It sweetens 
the bitterest cup, it eases the heaviest burden, it 
lightens the darkest day. It gives to the heart 
in which it dwells a joy like heaven itself, and 
although it also gives at times sorrow as deep 
and strong as the joy was high and great, it is 
still the best and sweetest and dearest thing 
on earth. But how much sweeter and better 
does it become when we know that the grave 
is not its prison house, that death is not ita 
destroyer, that it is ours not only here and now, 
but ours forever, and that somewhere, somehow, 
sometime, we shall find what we have lost ! 

Life, duty, love— these are glorious Avoids. 
none higher in human speech. But how much 
more glorious do they become when they are 
given back and interpreted to us in the lighl 
of that eternal hope which this Easter Day 
inspires! How much more glorious, how much 
more clear, does everything become! In the 



2?S THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 

light of that hope we can understand our- 
selves as we cannot without it — as no man can 
without it. Those deep and earnest longings 
which spring up in the heart only so often to be 
defeated and crushed, those yearnings and aspira- 
tions which seem to come from some eternal 
source, and to which we try to give utterance 
by art and beauty and song, but which we 
cannot fully in any of these ways express ; it is 
only in the light of that eternal hope which 
this Easter Day inspires that we can interpret 
ourselves to ourselves and know what we really 
mean, and what we really are. 

Then fill the churches with flowers, and let the 
arches ring with the carols of children's praise, 
and the most triumphant peals of music which 
the genius of man has inspired ; let everything 
that is beautiful and cheerful and bright be 
called upon to express the joy that is in our 
hearts to-day. Oh, earth, earth, earth ! hear 
the word of the Lord upon this Easter Day. In 
all your duties and tasks, your joys, your sor- 
rows, your ambitions, oh. men and women ! 
remember, remember, that " Jesus Christ was 
raised from the dead," and that eternal love — it 
must be so— has given eternal life. 



